


Give Another Number To Me

by Laliandra



Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: Bad dates, Misunderstandings, Multi, Mutual Pining, polyamorous pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 03:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laliandra/pseuds/Laliandra
Summary: [tweet to @ebfavs] You realize you're actually marrying BOTH of them, right?@ebfavs: Replying to [tweeter] @jonfavs and 2 others#blessed





	Give Another Number To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [formerlydf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/gifts).



> this one's for DF, the very best samepagebestpage co-conspirator anyone could wish for. May all of these Jon Lovett feelings express mine. A while ago Lauren said, "oo, what if Lovett helped Emily write her vows" which I thought would make a cute short fic and then... things got out of hand. With a million million thanks to gdgdbaby who fixed up all of my many, god, so many, comma errors and, of course, moog for saying "no babe, they definitely need to bang to resolve this amount of pining." As always, keep it secret, keep it safe.

“You could try and look more surprised,” Emily says as she ruthlessly clears Lovett’s dining table to make space for her laptop. “I swore I wasn’t going to do this, like, yesterday.” 

 

Lovett catches a die as it gets swept aside. “I know, but also I know that’s like, your ultimate sign of panicking. It’s fine, I won’t tell Favreau that you got in a ringer for your vows. Anyway, he hasn't even started yet.” 

 

“He’s only got a week. I cannot believe him,” Emily says, obviously lying. They both always knew that all of this would happen, Lovett is pretty sure. He’s also sure that it’s only a matter of time before he and Tommy start getting plagued with terrified Whatsapps about vows, speeches, commitment, fucking up, not being good enough to do this, not being good enough for Emily, not being good for anything: the usual escalation of a Jon Favreau freak out. 

 

“Yes, well, you know how it goes with him,” Lovett says. He does not mention the probability of a freak out to Emily, who is clearly freaking out, dressed up way too smartly for a Saturday and fully made up. Lovett knows the signs, and he can read Leo too; he hasn’t stopped making little distressed circles at her feet. Plus Jon usually takes him with on his run at this time. Lovett gets them both a Diet Coke and slides into the seat next to her. “This is writer’s fuel,” he tells her when she raises an eyebrow. 

 

“Just, read it and tell me the truth,” she says, shoving her laptop at him and pulling a face. 

 

“When do I ever not,” Lovett says, which makes her laugh. 

 

She says, “Why do you think I’m here and not with Tess or Hanna, or Tommy for that matter. No massaged statements, please.” Lovett nods firmly. 

 

He’s about two sentences in when Emily puts her head on the table, and then covers it with her arms. “I can’t stand this. How do any of you do this, oh my god, I should have just emailed you and then gone for a run or something. God, this is torture.” 

 

Lovett leans down and kisses the back of her hand. “Mostly like this. Now imagine it’s Jon reading it and you’re, like, an twenty five year old idiot and he’s the handsome voice of Obama and has the world’s most expressive face. He used to actively wince while reading my stuff sometimes, it was a nightmare.” 

 

“I’m going to tell him that you said he was handsome,” Emily says with a small laugh. 

 

Lovett scoffs. “He knows that, Em. Everyone knows that. I say it all the time.” It helps, kind of. If he can’t become inured to Jon’s face at least he can make it an everyday fact rather than a heartskipping complication. “And this is really good so far.” 

 

Emily groans and buries her head in the crook of her elbow, which makes Leo whine and try and get into her lap. “It’s okay, Leo, your mom’s just having her first crisis of creativity,” Lovett tells him, fluffling his ears. 

 

The speech is really so good it becomes a problem about a third of the way in, when Emily is talking about how their life grew together. God, Lovett remembers it happening, the way that they worked to make it work, Jon killing himself to do long distance at the White House, the way they were, even then, brighter and better as soon as they could just be in the same room, as if nothing else in their wonderful, blessed lives could come close to the pleasure of being together. He sniffs and Emily turns her head instantly. “I’m not done yet,” he says, and his voice is all creaky with incipient sobs.

 

She shuffles closer, leans her head against his arm. “I’m still closing my eyes until you’re done,” she says. There’s nothing Lovett can do against the crying as he continues, as the promises begin: he can picture it so clearly, the both of them standing in front of Judge Black, luminous and snotty, certain of a lifetime to come. They’re getting married, his very best people, marrying each other with these promises of love and support, and he knows, he just knows, that they’re going to keep them. 

 

“You’re going to be so fucking happy,” he says with an extra large sob. 

 

Emily says, “Oh, Lovett!” and wraps her arms around him. 

 

Lovett sniffs into her hair, drags in some breaths of her perfume until he feels steadier. “If this is what it does to me, Jon is going to be a mess,” he says, which sets him off crying again. It’s not like people don’t promise things to Jon, but he really does deserve the happy life encapsulated in these words. He deserves the world. They both do. Lovett wipes his face with his hand and then wipes his hand on her blouse. 

 

Emily shakes her head at him, and then picks up Leo from his worried pacing under their chairs and puts him into Lovett’s lap. 

 

“We’re okay, Leo,” Lovett promises and feels Pundit’s nose press into his ankle. Emily reaches down to pet her, all good blondes here for him as he cries, which makes something in Lovett’s chest turn over. 

 

“Honestly, you could have written anything and Favreau would be way too much of a mess to judge, this is, like, overachieving, as per,” he says. There was a time early on where he was genuinely worried he was going to hate this bubbly baby that Jon was head over heels for, some perfect sorority girl with great politics and great tits. Except she’d been Emily. His weird weird best friend. He’s not sure who among the three of them had been most relieved by this outcome, or who was most surprised at just how well it worked out, his head also over his heels somehow. 

 

Emily strokes Leo and then pats his shoulder. “Everyone else will be judging though, come on. Jon can watch the video back and commentate like you know he wants to.” 

 

Lovett breathes out long, pushes away whatever weird pain is being brought up by this. “Okay, let’s fix your obsession with the word ‘journey’ and your aversion to adverbs.”

 

They’re puzzling over whether to include a joke about Jon’s complete inability to pick inconsequential favourites which he sometimes finds funny and sometimes finds shameful in the way that they’ve all been trying to train out of him for years - fuck Catholicism - when Emily tilts her head and says, “You know, you’re very good at this.”

 

“Oh wow, thanks,” Lovett says with an exaggerated wince.

 

Emily laughs it off. “I mean it! Not just the writing stuff, I knew that already, you’re just... You’re good at us. You know what I want to say about him.” 

 

“I spend enough time with you,” Lovett says. “And come on, it’s not hard to find stuff to love Jon Favreau for, that’s why I don’t tell him about them. He’s like, one of the best people out there - the most good in terms of quality and morality. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I kind of pledged myself to him already, like, at least twice.” Emily widens her eyes at that. Lovett knew from that start that this was dangerous ground, talking about Jon, talking about what he brings to the world, has brought to Lovett’s life, but Lovett can’t seem to stop now. Jon and Emily are a wellspring of earnest that he cannot control. “And then there’s you. You’re like, completely out of his league. The two of you are very hashtag goals as the youths say; perfect apart and even better together. It, honestly, it’s very inspiring except I don’t have to wish I knew what it was like because it makes me better too. It’s the warmest love I know. I’m never happier than when I’m with the two of you.” 

 

Emily says, “Oh,” and Lovett has the sudden sinking feeling that he’s not going to be able to laugh this one off. He tries anyway, because what else does he have. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to carry on leeching off your perfect relationship forever,” he says. 

  
“You’re not a leech,” Emily says. “Some kind of small rodent at least, come on.”

 

“Upgrade from parasite to pet, I’ll take it,” Lovett says. Lovett can tell that she’s thinking about something, but Emily doesn’t bring it up and he’s too afraid to ask what. 

 

She does steal his line about the warmest love she knows. They end up with some killer vows.

 

*

 

Lovett manages to kid himself that this off kilter feeling, this ache that won’t leave his chest even as he’s so ridiculously happy that Jon and Emily are getting married, is just some sense of an ending, the closing of a chapter of their lives. He is so delighted for them, but marriage changes this, even if they’re already the most old married people he knows apart from himself, Jon and Tommy, or the Obamas. Change hurts, even the good kind of change. 

 

This lasts exactly until Hanna says, in their corner of mocking the sheer level of gentile nonsense on display at this rehearsal dinner, “I think Tommy’s going to propose soon.” 

 

“Oh my god!” Lovett says, with pure delight. “Like, now? At the wedding? Is this why you’re telling me, so that I can stop him? We both know Emily would straight up murder him.” 

 

Hanna laughs which makes Tommy look over at them and smile. She’s right, Lovett can tell at once. That’s his thinking about marriage face right there. 

  
Hanna waves at him. “Nah, just needed to tell someone. It’s fine, he knows he’d be engaged for like four seconds before Em stabbed him in the neck with an oyster knife for upstaging her,” she says in tones of deep deep love. 

 

Lovett reaches over and hugs her hard. “Also you want me to help him not choose a terrible ring?” 

 

“Also I want you to help him not choose a terrible ring,” she agrees. Lovett laughs, so happy, waits for the ache to increase, but it... doesn’t. 

 

Later, drunker, he hugs Tommy and feels proud, so proud of him, overjoyed and not even minding when Tommy picks him up and swings him around like he’s always promising he’s going to stop doing and is going to do until his back actually gives out. 

 

Tommy is different, he tells himself in his pristine sea-themed room that night. Tommy and Hanna are different. This is not that comforting, as it turns out. Jon and Emily are different and he feels differently about them and that’s the problem, not a reasoning out. 

 

They’re different because he’s practically built his life around them at this point. They get invited to stuff as JonandEmilyandLovett. Seeing them is planned into his day. His emotional wellbeing is as tied up in them as it is with Pundit. However he feels about Tommy, he doesn’t want to what he wants with Jon, doesn’t want to, like, lick his abs while Emily laughs, and look into his eyes as he gets fucked and come home to him every night, every single night because being there with the two of them and the dogs and food in boxes feels right in his bones. He’s not... in love with Tommy and Hanna. 

 

“Fuck,” he says to himself, very quietly, into the dark. 

 

*

 

“I hear you had a hand with the vows,” Jon says as Lovett holds an icecube to his eyes to try and reduce the cry-induced puffing before the official photographs begin. 

 

“Oh my god, I knew Emily would crack. Couldn’t even last the day,” Lovett says with a mock sigh. He’s up on his tiptoes to see Jon’s eye properly and it’s distracting. 

 

Jon laughs, again, has only stopped laughing today to cry, wobbly and overwhelmed, or smile helplessly at Emily. “Actually, I asked her. There were a few lines that really sounded like you, your writing voice, but I wasn’t sure if you’d had direct input or if she’d just picked them up over the years.” 

 

Lovett focuses on wiping away some drips from under Jon’s eye, doesn’t really know what to say.  _ Yes, I wrote some of your wedding vows and it was easier than it should have been. _ Not a good look. “Still got a sharp ear for voice,” he says. 

 

Jon moves suddenly and hugs him with a tight, inescapable grip, big hand coming to rest on Lovett’s shoulder. “Thank you, for, for everything you said this weekend,” Jon says roughly. 

 

Lovett says, “For fuck’s sake, Favreau, it’s going to undo all of my hard work if you cry again.” He leans into him, probably crushing both of their buttonholes, but he doesn’t really care right now.

 

“Don’t care,” Jon says. He hugs Lovett even tighter. “I meant it. Mean it. It means a lot to me, it really does.” There’s something in his voice that Lovett can’t read, and he knows that he’s naturally suspicious but he knows that he put too much into his vows, his speeches, every time he’s looked at Jon over these last few days. Jon clears his throat and says, “I love you, man.” 

 

It is really almost enough. “You too, buddy,” Lovett says, trying to pull away and thwarted by Jon’s stupid muscles. “Is that right? Yeah, man. Bro. Bud. Pal.” 

 

“Well, that’s the last time I try that,” Jon says, laughing and sniffing. He pulls back and makes a questioning face at Lovett as he blinks away tears. 

 

“Ugh, still puffy but, honestly? I think it makes you look good, you offensive faced bastard,” Lovett says, shooing him away to where Emily will be waiting. Waiting for both of them, but she’s probably factored in Lovett being late and he needs a moment. Alone with his handful of melted ice. “Fucked,” he says. “So fucked.” 

 

*

 

Lovett manages to badger Tommy into bringing him breakfast before they have to go and try and record a podcast, and they both flop miserably on his sofa with the curtains closed, in mid-thirties three-day hangover hell. 

 

“Why did we start a media company? Like being answerable to the president wasn’t bad enough, now we have to deal with the whole internet if we need a day off,” he says, poking Tommy in the thigh with his foot crossly.

 

Tommy sighs but doesn’t move away, either out of love or inability. “This is our life now, Lovett, and it was partly your idea, so you can stop kicking me. Media moguls don’t kick.”

 

“I bet they do,” Lovett says darkly. He’s as prone as eating a burrito will allow, while Tommy is sitting firmly upright like any loose movements might make him seasick. “God, look at us. This is supposed to be, like, the start of a new chapter in our lives, Tommy, how am I meant to get my life together if I can’t even work one day a week or face daylight?”

 

Tommy groans and puts his burrito end on the floor with an exaggeratedly casual movement, like he has no idea Pundit is going to arrive in point zero five seconds to eat it. He says, “Does Jon getting married mean that we have to get our lives together? I still haven’t finished unpacking from my last brand new chapter.” 

 

Lovett snorts. “Anything that’s still in a box you probably don’t need. And fine, you can carry on with your ongoing leaf and I will start afresh. I will attend your hell gym. Get new furniture and go to the dentist on our amazing company health plan. Start dating again. I can totally figure out whatever shitty app all the gays have migrated to now.” 

 

It’s decided. He’s decided. This is how he’s going to cope with this complete bullshit that probably isn’t even a real thing because if it was a real thing he would have to come to terms with it. Because even he can’t possibly be the actual saddest gay. He didn’t just fall for a straight, married dude, he fell in love with a straight married couple without even wanting to have sex with arguably the hotter half of it. 

 

Tommy gives him a weird look and then closes off his whole face before Lovett can figure it out. “What?” Lovett asks. 

 

“Nothing,” Tommy says far too quickly. 

 

Lovett narrows his eyes. “Don’t make me kick you again, Vietor.”

 

Tommy fiddles with his watch, which is not his very bad tell, or even his nervous tell, but still means that he’s trying to reword something in his head. “I didn’t think you were, like, open to dating right now. I thought... Never mind.”

 

“I do mind!” Lovett kicks him indignantly. “What did you think? What? That I’d given up on dating and was content to just steal the Favreaus’ Postmates every other night and come home to my dog, who is perfect and wonderful but not much of a conversationalist and would absolutely eat my face if I died? Thanks.”

 

“No!” Tommy says, rising perfectly to the bait. “Actually, I thought you were maybe starting something? Or at least were, like, having that feeling. A relationship feeling about someone.” 

 

Lovett should have known it was a mistake to make friends with these people and then stay friends with them for the best part of a decade. On that first day at the White House he should have refused Favs’s peace offering of lunch and just ignored the two of them and lived a happy life with way less pining and being  _ known. _

 

“Well, new leaf Jonathan Lovett also doesn’t do having feelings about people that he can’t have,” he says, wincing as his bravado only lasts about six words. 

 

Tommy pulls a sympathetic face and then raises his coffee at him. “If that’s what you want, best of luck, man.”

 

“It is what I want,” Lovett tells them both. 

 

*

 

The Favreaus arrive home glowing with European tans and the vigour of people who have spent a week fucking non-stop. They invite Lovett over to dinner on Jon’s second night back from his and Tommy’s DC nostalgia and forearms fest, and he brings the cheapest, weirdest looking bottle of wine that he can find because he doesn’t like to let a good bit die. 

 

Emily hugs him for longer than he was expecting, way longer than usual, and it’s really, really nice for the duration of the hug, where all he can think about is how much he missed her, and then all the things he’s going to tell her, and how good it is to have the feeling that’s been lurking in the pit of his stomach just melt away. They’re back, they’re home. 

 

“We missed you so much, seriously. There was a point where I was like, we need to facetime Lovett and show him this amazing, like, Italian telenovela or whatever it’s called, but we couldn’t work the wifi at the place properly and we had to get a password, like, every time for the iPad and then it had finished by the time we got everything sorted out,” Emily tells him in a rush. It reminds him of when they first met, Emily tripping over her words to get them out at times, way keener to prove points or to be funny or be interesting with him than she was with Jon. The two of them were perfectly, naturally awkward with each other. 

 

“Hey you,” he says softly.

 

“Hey,” she says, scrunching up her nose. “Hey. Yes. Hi. Come inside, Jon is attempting some Blue Apron just for you, Friend of the Pod.” 

 

Lovett trails her through to the kitchen, to Jon and to Leo, who keeps darting between all of them, like he can make them not leave again if he just keeps a close enough eye on them. 

 

“I think I’m more than friends with the pod, Emily, it’s my podcast, I’m like, its god,” he’s saying as they get there, which makes Jon laugh even though he can only have heard half of the joke. He really is cooking, spatula in one hand and the instructions firmly clasped in the other like they might be able to save him. They’ve even got out the good flatware. 

 

Emily fusses with a napkin, an item that Lovett was previously unaware that they owned. “You can always borrow the ‘Spouse of the Pod’ hoodie that Andy got for me,” she says. 

 

Lovett is trying to work out what the actual fuck is happening here, with the cooking and the table and Favs in a button down. He can’t even look at Favs properly yet, building up his resistance by catching glimpses of his handsome face out of the corner of his eye. “It’s cute when you wear it because you’re married to Favreau; on me it would just look like I was married to a podcast, which isn’t far from the truth. It’s not like I have a hot podcaster husband to show off like you do.” 

 

“Ha ha!” Jon says after a beat, loud and sharp. Too loud and too sharp. It’s not suspicious that he’s vocalising text speak because he... does that. God knows they’ve tried to train it out of him. But it is suspicious for him to be too loud for a room, to leave a gap between something Lovett says and reacting to it. This whole setup is suspicious as hell. Both of them overdressed and the kitchen looking like it does for guests. Lovett isn’t a guest. He doesn’t want to be a guest. 

 

“Sit down,” Jon says. He looks nervous. 

 

It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped for them, only so many times Lovett can accidentally pour out his heart before they notice its contents. That the two of them  _ are  _ its contents. They’ve had two weeks to talk it over and the outcome is that they’re formal and nervous? The vows were a dead giveaway: he should have known not to get involved, not to put a single feeling into real words; he saw Emily seeing through him. And now she’s going to make them have it out like adults. This is exactly how fucked he feared he was, because this is the setup for them to sit him down nicely and for Emily to say in her nice calm voice that she knows that her best friend is crushingly in love with her husband. Say that Lovett has crossed a line, but it’s not his fault, it’s okay, they still want to be friends, they know he’s not good at this stuff. For Jon to look at him with those fucking cow eyes of his and say, god, something very understanding. It’s going to be awful for everyone but they’re going to be so understanding about it and isn’t that why he loves them so much, their huge ridiculous hearts and empathy without limit. He can spare them this. 

 

“Jon,” Emily says, nice and calm. “We-”

 

“ - you know, this place looks nicer than the last three places I got taken on dates,” Lovett says as fast as he can. “Oh, yeah, so I’ve not been idle while you were off drinking traitor wine and sunning yourselves. New leaf! I changed the sheets, threw out that dead fern in the sunroom, got back in the game.” 

 

“Oh,” Emily says. There is a really long silence, like they’re surprised that he’s interrupted which he knows cannot be the case. 

 

Lovett says, “Were you that attached to the fern? You complain about it every time your dog tries to eat it, like that’s somehow my fault.”

 

Emily throws Jon a pleading look and for once he doesn’t come to her rescue, still just standing there with a spatula staring at Lovett. It’s fine, it’s fine, Lovett just derailed whatever compassionate speech Jon had come prepared with and he’s resetting. Lovett goes to get himself a Diet Coke from the fridge and breathes for a few moments behind the door where they can’t see him. He closes the door and catches the end of some married nonverbal eyebrow conversation. They both look sort of distressed. 

  
“Sorry,” he says. He wants to curl up in their laps like Pundit does sometimes, making herself very small and wedging herself between Jon and Emily to sleep. “Sorry, I’m being weird, I know. Hi. I think I maybe told myself so many times that it wouldn’t be weird just because you guys are married now that I made it weird. So that’s weird.” 

 

Jon seems to shake himself out of... whatever that was. “You don’t have to try so hard with us, you know that,” he says, and comes over and hugs Lovett briefly before Lovett can object, which is their standard MO. 

 

Lovett says, “Some people might take that as an insult, but sure. And you two can hardly talk; what’s all this with the wedding china and the heirloom cutlery if not trying hard?”

 

“Right!” Jon says. “Exactly. What else. Nothing else.” He rubs the back of his neck. Jon hates to have put effort into something and it go in the wrong direction, it makes him all uncomfortable and... and weird. 

 

“I appreciate effort,” Lovett says. “In fact, I think I’m going to demand more of it from now on. No more using the plastic forks that come with the Postmates. And next time I want Jon in a suit and Leo in a bowtie and maybe my theme music. At the very least one of my Spotify playlists. This is the level. I can’t believe I’ve been letting you get all casual on me.” 

 

Emily rolls her eyes at him, smiles that picture perfect smile. “We missed you, and we didn’t meant to make it weird,” she says. “Tell us everything about the fern and the sheets. Do you want to get in on our Blue Aproning?” 

 

“One step at a time,” Lovett says with genuine alarm. Jon laughs at them, rich and warm and goofy, and this is almost everything Lovett wants. 

 

*

 

Lovett goes on one more grim Grindr date where the dude actively fellates a summer roll in a place Lovett is never going to be able to come back to. He lets Darren - definitely not five eleven - take him to his apartment - serial killer neat - and blow him - actually great but, whatever - and then he goes home.

 

The lights are still on at the Favreaus’ when Lovett passes, but he doesn’t go in. He has to try and break that habit, maybe go a bit cold turkey. He lets Pundit out, gets himself some chips and his laptop and curls up in the easy chair, determined not to feel crappy about any of it. He likes to be by himself, he always has. It’s not like he hasn’t vaguely tried to get over his Jon Favreau thing over the years, but never in any serious way. He thinks it’s probably impossible, really. Who gets over Favs? What are you supposed to tell yourself at 3am when your head is too full of him and you want to jerk off about it but know that you shouldn’t? That he’s just too handsome? Too passionate? Lovett has tried being annoyed with how earnest he is before, but at this point it’s purely endearing, like his tooth gap and terror of moths. 

 

He can try. Jon is  _ married _ . Jon is married to a woman, and Lovett is gay; surely that should have put a stop to all of this rather than making it worse.

 

Lovett didn’t want Jon like this before Emily, couldn’t imagine a life together, hadn’t fallen like this for the younger version of him. The 3am jerking off is still the same, mostly, except that if he thinks about afterwards they’re all there, the three of them, Emily wiping overwhelmed tears from Jon’s eyes and being really impressed with Lovett. Some queens are probably about to beat down his door and demand that he give his gay card back. 

 

“Pundit, you have to scare them away, okay,” he tells her, and she noses at him with a worrying lack of aggression. He doesn’t want to have sex with Emily, that’s still very clear, but he doesn’t just want Jon,and that’s been the part that has really thrown him. Panicked him into thinking dudes on a hookup app might actually mean it when they say they want to take him out to dinner.  

 

The only thing left is to start actually letting people set him up with their one other gay friend, and getting into less codependent habits with his best friends that he works with, because he clearly has a problem there. 

 

*

 

After three days he makes Jon visibly pout when he refuses a direct invitation to hang out after work. About an hour later Emily shows up and drags him out to get ice cream from the place he loves but that they have to drive to, which seems nice until he realises she’s trapped him in a moving vehicle. 

 

“Yes,” she says when he brings this up. “I’m just glad you only worked it out on the freeway. I wasn’t going to let you carry on avoiding us.” 

  
“It’s only been three days,” Lovett responds. He can tell from the look that Emily slides him from under her sunglasses that he’s damned himself immediately. He sighs and looks out of the window at California blurring past, golden and grimy. 

 

Emily says, “Hey, don’t you Ryan Atwood me, Jonathan. Since when do we not see each other for three days? When do you not even text me? Tommy says you’ve been weird at the office too.” 

 

“Ugh, snitch,” Lovett says. His brief experiments with lying to Emily only ever last this long, and he’s got a much bigger secret to conceal; he can’t start pretending that he hasn't been avoiding Jon at Crooked, ducking out of the kitchen and making Tommy do all the work in the ad reads. 

 

“What happened? Don’t you love us any more?” Emily says, with a catch in her voice. She looks painfully young when Lovett looks back at her, young and small, like someone he shouldn’t be able to hurt.  

 

Lovett puts his hand on her knee, says, “Hey, no, don’t be ridiculous. The Black-Favreaus are and always will be my very favourite all American heterosexual dreamboats. Not to be this person, but it’s not you, it’s me.” He sighs and looks at her again. At least they’re both wearing sunglasses. He can still catch the hurt twist of her mouth. “I’m just feeling very... you guys are married, Tommy is counting the days until he can propose without upstaging you, and I’m here with my dog and a social schedule built around my two coworkers happening to be free.”

  
“Lovett,” Emily says softly. 

 

Lovett pulls a face. “God, I know, I have a good life. I really like it, actually, our country’s ruin is my salvation, sorry America but I’m happy. It just hit me that I should like, try and get it together, you know, and not just be hanging out on your floor. It seemed suddenly way more tragic now that you’re married.” 

 

He hasn't lied to her, which feels important, and not only because she’d be able to tell. 

 

“I know that you feel -- that you don’t want a wife or anything, but you’re, like, you’re not just a person we hang out with,” Emily says. 

 

Lovett sort of wants to throw up or run away, punched all the way through with irony. “I know,” he says. “Sorry. I know I should have talked to you guys about it.” 

 

“Yes, you should’ve, could’ve. Didn’t’ve. We support you in whatever your new leafing involves.” Emily puts her hand over his for a second. “Even your newfound desire for dating.” 

 

“My last date mimed a sex act in my favourite Vietnamese place, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a desire,” Lovett says. 

 

Emily cracks up, filling the car with that bright Favreau laughter; his easiest audience by far. “Which act - no, wait, don’t tell me. Jon will cry if you tell me bad date stories without him.” 

 

*

 

After his next date with a friend of a friend of Spencer’s he goes home, gets Pundit, and goes across the street. 

 

Jon says, “Hey,” and Lovett says, “Did you know that apparently I would be really cute if I considered dressing like an adult and working on sculpting out my face?”

 

Jon looks completely baffled for a moment and then rage sort of explodes across his generally placid face. “He said that to you? He actually said that? To you? What the fuck. What the fuck?!” 

 

Lovett throws himself down on the sofa next to him and steals his beer. “I know you haven't done it in a while, but dating? Is hell.” 

 

Jon scootches into Lovett’s space and then seems slightly at a loss for what to actually do there for a second. “That’s like, next level asshole though,” he says, and in quick succession bumps Lovett’s shoulder, bumps his knee and then pats it. 

 

Lovett leans grumpily into him. “It’s not that uncommon, actually,” he says. He doesn’t know why he isn't able to just let this go. “Guys are very willing to point out my flaws, and I have plenty.”

 

“Yeah, but your face isn’t one of them,” Jon says, with his ‘why are we arguing this obvious fact’ voice that Lovett recognises from the White House. He doesn’t know what to do with this clear-eyed certainty: there’s little to no point arguing, although he often does, and he’s too tired to get into the whole ‘hey, you just complimented me did you mean to, hey, you know that’s kind of gay’ routine that he usually fends Jon off with. Not that it works, really, but sometimes he gets flustered enough that Lovett can swing the subject to something else. So he laughs.

 

“What?” Jon says. “It’s not. Your clothing choices, however, are usually something to pick apart.”

  
“Emily said this was a nice hat,” Lovett says, turning his head so that he can knock Jon with the brim, right in his stupid jawline. Except from here he can see the rasp of stubble just grown in, can smell the familiar earth spice of Jon’s boring aftershave. Sometimes he comes over just to wrap himself in their soft, heavy blankets that they keep thrown over the sofa, the ones that smell of them both, and stays there until the world unscrambles. Usually this ends with him asleep with the dogs until Emily gets bored and wakes him up to avoid work with her, but sometimes she’ll tuck herself in under his feet to read, or Jon will sit on the chair opposite and not even stare at him until he’s ready to unblanket and face the world. 

 

It’s hard to get over a crush, harder still to fall out of love with people who know you best of all. Lovett feels frozen by the enormity, but he tells himself that he can have these things, have the two of them as a home from home; he just has to stop wanting to run his lips along Jon’s jawline until they’re raw and then kiss his waiting mouth. 

 

“It  _ is  _ a good hat,” Emily says brightly. Lovett jerks back, and Jon, weirdly, does the same, as if he’d been doing something as fucking crass as imagining making out with someone else’s husband so hard that he hadn’t noticed them come into the room. 

  
“Lovett’s date was an asshole,” he says. 

 

Emily does a pout that is pure Favreau and puts herself on Lovett’s other side where there shouldn’t even be room for her. She says, “Oh, no, baby, no, what kind of asshole?” 

 

“See,” Lovett says, resting her head on her shoulder, a safer place, a better place. “Emily knows that there are endless assholes out there, Jon. Acres of assholes. Infinite hives of scum and villainy. That’s dating men. Men are scum. That’s today’s lesson.” 

 

“That’s every day’s lesson,” Emily says companionably. “Did he fellate any foodstuffs, though? No? Okay, did he out of the blue really accurately guess your shoe size and then refuse to get into why he did that? Did he take you to a place that only served food in jars? Tiny jars with screw top lids? Did he tell you that not voting is actually the truest form of participant democracy?” 

 

“Sweet jesus,” Lovett says. 

 

Jon takes his beer back from Lovett’s hand and takes a long swig. “Seconded. And no, he said something shitty about the... the sculpture of Lovett’s face or some bullshit.” He pulls out his phone. “You said he was Spencer’s friend, right?”

 

Lovett takes the phone from his hand and hands it to Emily. “No getting into Twitter fights with Spencer. Or anyone. Not for my honour, anyway. I think, not that I’m defending him - asshole, absolutely - that he thought he was making a helpful suggestion. I think Spencer told him that I’d been out of the game for a while, but I guess he failed to mention that was because I was helping reshape the American political conversation and trying to hire people to do jobs that I don’t understand. And decorating an office in a theme of tasteful patriotism. It’s basically impossible to do tasteful patriotism in this day and age, yet another thing that has been taken from us. Also, I want to hear more about the place with the jars. Wait, no, the feet dude. Was that in DC? I bet that was in DC.”

 

“It was not, although I see where you’re coming from,” Emily says. “I’m sorry about your bad date, though, what a bag of dicks. Your face is lovely, Lovett.” She takes his hat off and kisses his cheek. “One of the best ones out there.” She leans across him and kisses Jon, just briefly, the smallest hello of a kiss that makes Lovett feel warm anyway. He can make this enough for himself, happy between them in their happiness. Always welcome in their space, up to a point. A very reasonable point. “This house has been hashtag blessed with faces this evening.” 

 

“Oh, sure, me and Pundit are really adding to the overall face quality,” Lovett says. 

 

Emily scoops Pundit up off his feet and covers her ears. “Don’t you listen to your dad, don’t let his self esteem issues affect you, perfect girl.” Lovett pulls a face at her because it’s mean to use his dog against him, but Emily is rarely swayed by guilt. “Fine,” he sighs. 

 

“Good boy,” Emily says. “I will now reward you all with the story of the man who thought it was a good idea to tell me he was taking me for dinner and then took me fishing.”

 

*

 

The next date does argue that non-voting could be a form of participant democracy, and Lovett texts Emily that she's a witch, gives the dude a verbal smackdown, takes his phone to google ‘dictionary definition of participant’, and leaves before the food arrives. There is spare Postmates for him at the Favreaus’, though, so that isn't so bad. 

 

“We always order enough for you too these days,” Jon says when Lovett makes a comment about his luck. “It just seems easier.” 

 

“And we forget not to,” Emily adds. 

 

Lovett gives her a suspicious prod with his chopsticks. “Or you were hoping that I’d have a bad date for your amusement.  _ Or _ you cursed me with your Ohian magicks, with a k because that’s more basic, and you knew I’d leave before entrees.” 

 

Jon chokes with laughter and then turns his Obama face on Lovett. “We want you to be happy, Lovett. What kind of friends hope for bad dates.”

 

“Hmmm, that’s not a denial though, is it? Of the hoping or the cursing,” Lovett points out. 

 

Jon pulls a ‘help me’ face at Emily, and Lovett rolls his eyes. “Oh my god, it’s fine, you’re a very good friend slash secretary slash neighbour.” He sighs. “For now.”

 

“You had a bad date, you are allowed to bitch about us moving for, hmm, until I’ve finished this glass of wine,” Emily says. 

 

Lovett puts his food down so that he can get into it. “Look, obviously Pundit is a perfect dog in literally every way conceivable, but she is also stubborn. She will keep coming here, I know it. She has a sofa spot. She has a place in your garden that she likes to pee. This is animal cruelty...”

 

*

 

Lovett doesn’t believe in curses, really, but he could start after he has three bad dates in a week - “Might as well get them all out of the way as quickly as possible.” “Are you sure you’re actually into this whole dating thing?” “No one is into first dates, Tommy, shut up. Shut all the way up. Keep it shut.” - with no hope for any improvement from any of them. 

 

So he takes a break, runs some, spends a lot of time emailing with Emily about potential new haircuts. Somehow the office gets in on it and there’s a whole Slack channel full of pictures before he knows what’s happening. It’s good, hot dude pictures on demand and technically at work, although he’s never sure if he can really call this work. His writing is starting to come together again, the words that breathe in his brain somehow making it onto the page still alive. He’s got a standing Friday night date with a hundred people who laugh at every one of his jokes, and his best friends every single day, the kind of belonging that seemed too much just a year ago, that he fantasised about when he got Jon and Tommy out of DC and onto his floor for a weekend, that he couldn’t have even gotten close enough to dream about when he was an angry lonely idiot teenager, all secrets and wanting. 

 

He’s down to one secret thing that he wants with all of his heart, so that’s not that bad, really. 

 

There aren’t really that many people who have single gay friends left at this point, or ones that want to go on an actual date. The mid-thirties line of people who want to settle down vs those who really do not has been firmly drawn, and it’s hard to jump sides, even harder to find people who are also there. Lovett doesn’t want to start looking at twenty five year olds, whatever his cohosts and their successful age gaps might suggest. He doesn’t want to have to try to make something with someone who doesn’t want the same things. That’s why he does say yes when Ira introduces him to an ‘old friend’, which probably means ‘ex but I don’t want to say that in front of the straights’. 

 

Emily makes encouraging thumbs up behind the dude, and he is cute. He’s definitely cute. His name is Kirk but that’s not his fault, and he takes Lovett to a pretty nice Italian place, and Lovett still ends up at the end of the night planting himself onto the Favreaus’ bed next to a sickly Jon, just face first into the pillows. 

 

“The only thing worse than a shitty date is a boring date,” he says into the soft, soft fabric. 

 

Jon’s hand lands on the back of his head slightly harder than he thinks Jon meant, seeing as he follows it up with a gentle run through his curls. Lovett makes an approving noise. Jon says, “I'm sorry, Lovett. He sounded cool.” 

 

“He wasn't... not cool. We just didn't click,” Lovett sighs. 

 

He knows he’s been pretty lucky in his life to find people he has all the chemistry in the world with, and that new people struggle to live up to that, but it also means he knows a spark when he sees it. Feels it. “No fun story for you tonight, sorry.” 

 

Jon's hand stills in Lovett's hair until Lovett makes an angry cat noise and he restarts his careful stroking. It feels ridiculously good. 

 

“What?” Lovett says. 

 

Jon sighs. “Look, still a good friend, still don’t want you to have shitty dates, but it’s nice that you’re home. Here. It’s nice that you’re here with me.”

 

“I forgot how pathetic you get when you’re actually sick,” Lovett says, rolling over to look at Jon. Jon hardly ever gets sick, revolting in his natural glowy vigour, so he acts like the entire world has betrayed him whenever he gets so much as a cold. “How are you doing? Should Em have left you alone? Are you drinking lots of water?” He squints over at Jon’s mouth. “You look dehydrated, drink some water.” 

 

Jon laughs, his face soft with that indulgent expression that might be Lovett’s favourite. “Sure, Lovett, I’ll drink some water.” 

 

“Why are you doing the fond face?” Lovett says. “I’m literally asking you to fulfill a basic human need.”

 

“No reason,” Jon says, levering himself up with a wince. “Oh, man, look at the dogs.” 

 

“Don’t want to move, describe them to me,” Lovett says, turning his face back into the pillow so that he doesn’t watch Jon’s throat as he drinks. Jon laughs again. “Okay, so Pundit was lying in Leo’s bed, you know, the one he acts mortally offended by most of the time, but he couldn’t bear to be apart so he’s lying on top of her.” 

 

“Sure, ‘couldn’t stand to be apart’, wasn’t just being a possessive weirdo,” Lovett says. 

 

“Yeah,” Jon says, clearing his throat. “Hey, sorry, I took some Nyquil before I knew you were coming over.”

 

“What do you want, my permission to sleep? Or is this just a disclaimer on every story you tell about our dogs.” There's always a brief window of brilliant random thoughts that you can extract from Jon just before he passes out. 

 

“Both?” Jon says, wriggling back down under the comforter. 

 

Lovett flops onto his back and gets out his phone. “Go for it, I don't come here to be entertained. You look like you need sleep.” 

 

“Oh  _ thanks _ ,” Jon says with a wince, like he actually thinks he might look like shit, rather than just soft in an old college hoodie and more dark-eyed than usual. Everything about him is so egregious. Lovett always thought they should hate each other, sometimes wants to, but there's no way he could ever pull it off. He is compromised on every level here. Jon looks -  well, not quite State of the Union exhausted, but definitely Supreme Court season tired. 

 

“That's right, you should sleep before you ruin that pretty face forever,” Lovett says. Jon smiles, small and sweet, nuzzles down into the pillows like a happy kid. Lovett's heart does something loud and painful. 

 

“Sorry,” Jon says and Lovett gives in, pets his hair exactly four times. He says, “Don’t be a dumbass, go to sleep, I can entertain myself until Em gets home. Shh now.” 

 

Jon makes a small complaining noise so Lovett pets him a little more, until Jon’s eyes slide shut and then a little bit longer, watching Jon’s face go slack and deceptively peaceful. It’s a holy terror of a face, really, far too much, far too beloved. 

 

“This is very bad entertaining yourself,” Lovett tells himself, and flops onto his back to stare at the much safer ceiling. Jon probably wouldn’t think it was that weird if he woke up and Lovett was still there looking at him, accepts affection into his life with a sunny, arrogant ease, and he’s never been weird about being best friends with a gay guy, has never shied away from sharing space, about touches, has never shied away from anything at all about Jon Lovett. Not even now when he knows. Knows that Lovett is breaking the unspoken dude gay friend rule - don’t worry, bro, it’s not like I want to sleep with you - and is still just happy when Lovett crashes into his actual marital bed. Lovett gets his headphones out to drown out whatever the fuck his brain was about to start doing with ‘marital bed’ and puts a podcast on. Jon shuffles closer and sticks his nose onto Lovett’s arm in a move that is so reminiscent of Pundit that it makes Lovett laugh. “Weirdo,” he says fondly. It’s not that bad. He can feel Jon breathe against him. Steady, close and slightly invasive; the Favreau wheelhouse. 

 

He doesn’t think that he falls asleep but suddenly the podcast he’s listening to is last week’s and Emily is putting a blanket over him. “Hey babe,” she says softly. “You okay there? Did this one wear you out?” 

 

“He fell asleep like ten minutes after I got here, but whatever, I briefly got some of that sweet stoned Favreau action,” Lovett says, before he can run any of that through the filter he’s been trying to keep in place recently. Emily laughs and pushes at his side until he has to turn so that she can sit on the bed in the space made by the curve of his body. Jon flings an arm over him and Lovett freezes but Emily just pats him on the forearm and gives Lovett an apologetic look. “He’s extra clingy when he’s sick. How was your date? Kirk? He seemed nice.” 

 

“He was nice. But, not, just not for me,” Lovett says. 

 

Emily pulls a face. “I’m sorry, babe. You want to talk about it?” She pushes her feet under Lovett’s thigh because they’re always cold and he runs warmer. Although not as warm as Jon, because those two are stupidly perfectly compatible in every way, even down to him always being there to heat her feet to a nice temperature. 

 

Lovett sighs again. “You know what, no, I actually don’t.” He doesn’t really feel like rehashing. There’s probably some amusing mileage to be gotten out of it, but he doesn’t have to do that right now. He only wants to be funny about something that’s actually funny with Emily. Mostly he’s been dealing with his Not-Crush-Whatever on Emily by shoving it firmly into a box in the back of his mind marked ‘way too complicated,’ but sometimes it bursts right out, clawing and unstoppable, no longer a box but a banner that says  _ this is your person and you want to be something with them that you don’t want with anyone else _ . 

 

“Still, that sucks, and then you got fallen asleep on. You want to steal Jon’s iPad and watch some Untucked?” 

 

Lovett should say no, but he’s tired and warm, and this is where he feels most himself in the world; it’s hard to leave at the best of times. He says, “Yes.” 

 

*

 

The next morning Tommy picks them both up, and he and Jon spend the entire car ride having some kind of weird silent conversation with their eyebrows and the occasional sport reference. Lovett tries not to tune it out, but it happens pretty automatically these days. 

 

It takes Tommy until lunchtime to corner Lovett, so Lovett feels quite prepared for that. Except that Tommy isn’t like,  _ hey, Lovett, this is a bro intervention, I know it’s kind of an out of character thing for me but you’re crossing a line _ . Instead, Tommy gives him the last orange LaCroix in the fridge and then turns a really gentle face on him and says, “Hey, are you doing okay?” 

 

It’s not a bro intervention, it’s a feelings intervention. and those are way worse. It’s only fun when they to do it to Tommy and make him sleep or admit sadness or move to LA. 

 

He turns away from Tommy for a second, tries, “Yeah, sure, you know, Trump adjusted terms, whatever.”

 

“Lovett,” Tommy says. When Lovett turns back, Tommy rolls his eyes at him. “Come on.”

 

Friendship is good and has value, Lovett reminds himself. Tommy is being helpful, and even when he’s being an interfering asshole, he’s often still fundamentally right. Lovett loves his friends. Working every day with them has been a good development. He cannot throw a bag and his dog in his car and drive until it craps out and live a simpler life teaching math via Skype to children in the developing world. 

 

“New leaves are hard. New leafs? New leaves. Really hard. Fresh starts are not that fun, just frustrating. You know?” He slumps against the kitchen counter to sell it a bit harder.

 

Tommy makes his hot understanding/active listening face. “I know, but you don’t seem frustrated, you seemed kind of ... Sad. Okay, fine, resigned? Is that softballing it enough?”

 

Lovett clutches at the counter behind himself. “‘You seem sad’? Fucking hell. Where is Jon Favreau, this bullshit has him written all over it.”

 

“Hey, I care,” Tommy says sharply and it’s almost enough to make Lovett apologise. “He’s also been acting pretty off. He’s said a few things, that maybe you wouldn’t want to talk to him about whatever this is. It’s not like I haven’t noticed that things have been weird with you two recently, so I thought I’d see if maybe you wanted to talk about that, but I realise now that was an affront to you.”

 

There’s not a lot you can do in the full glare of Tommy’s angry concern, especially not when things are strange, and hard, and maybe kind of sad. Lovett sighs. “Things were weird, things are getting better. I was the one causing the weird. For once it’s not Jon’s fault, okay? I fucked up a -” He can’t find a single way to make this less awful. “- an emotions thing.” 

 

Tommy says, “Yikes,” with a sympathetic wince. “You want to grab dinner tonight? Just you and me? I’ll pay.” 

 

“You’re not going to make me talk about this more, are you?” Lovett asks hopefully. 

 

“Not if you don’t want to,” Tommy says. “Just thought you might like to get dinner with someone you actually like for once.”

 

“Mm, trust fund boy date me on it,” Lovett says. It’s not his finest work but Tommy gives it an honest laugh anyway. 

 

Lovett Slack messages Jon when he’s back at his desk. 

 

_ Tommy’s intervention went great you’ll be pleased to know. I’m getting fancy dinner out of it. Sadness lobster for me! _

 

After the usual amount of time where Jon tries to work out what the red bar on his slack tab means, remembers, loses the messaging section, and then finally reads the message, Jon’s head pops out around the side of his monitor. 

 

“What?” Lovett mouths. Jon stares at him for a while and then scoots his chair all the way past Tommy, Pundit, the dog bed, the guitar, and Lovett’s own chair to rest in Lovett’s corner. “ _ What _ ?” Lovett says out loud.

 

Jon glances around quickly but their office is their office, so no one notices or cares about one of its founders being deeply strange. “You’re  _ sad? _ ” he says, voice slightly wobbling. 

  
“I thought you were making Tommy do your dirty work on that front,” Lovett mutters. 

 

Jon looks down at his hands, all lovely contrite lines. “Look, I thought maybe you wanted to talk about me, so. It seemed like the way to do it. I know I’ve been... I can do better.” 

 

Lovett says, “Hey, what? No, that’s not the narrative here. That’s all about how I thought I was doing okay and it turns out everyone has just been talking about how sad I am.” 

 

It’s been tiring, but he thought he was mostly faking it until he was making it, at the very least. There are whole stretches of time where he hasn't thought about the accidental mess he’s made of his best friendship. His best thing. 

 

Jon says, “No, it’s not like that at all, Lovett. Tommy thought maybe there was something up, and I know that you’re having a rough time with all the shitbags out there, and dating, and, and stuff. Maybe stuff that you don’t want to talk to me about, since...” He leans briefly into Lovett’s shoulder, still not looking at him. “And I worry, you know, that it speaks to a larger thing, a real problem that we’re not helping you with. I don’t think anyone else has noticed anything’s off but we have. I know you talk to Em, but - ugh, look, we all worry too much, I know, you tell us all the time.”

 

Jon looks so guilty, always taking on the problems of the world, taking them personally, failing people by not being all things all the time. Like he’s the one fucking this up. 

 

“It’s a rough patch, but I’m actually - you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about how great my life is, with Crooked and you guys and everything. I’ve got merch. What more could I want?” He pats Jon’s thigh. “Apart from three interfering best friends who just want me to be happy.”

 

Jon looks up at him with half a smile. “Hey, so does that mean I don’t have to hold back on how wrong you are about media monopolies?”

 

“Oh my god,” Lovett says, determined to win and also to make that smile come out in full force. “Let’s get into it.”

 

*

 

“And then he said that we have to start with fucking media literacy,” Lovett says, waving his glass of very expensive rosé. It doesn’t taste that different to normal person priced rosé, whatever Tommy says. “Don’t give me that look, I know you agree with me, that’s just old messaging getting to you.”

 

Tommy grins and nods almost imperceptibly. He’s sitting across from Lovett in their booth, neither of them dressed nicely enough, a night of mixing wine and beer and Twitter and jewellry websites, of thoroughly confusing all of the waitstaff. A good night.

 

Lovett is about to text Jon about his crushing victory when the full absurdity of the situation hits him and he starts to laugh, finds that he can’t stop. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, god, it’s just... Oh my god. Here I am on a best friend date, and it’s not a real date but it’s probably the best one I’ve had all month. Because I’ve been dating anyone and everyone to try and get over our other best friends and it’s been making me so sad that you all noticed, so now you’re taking me out and I’m sitting here about to message him. I just. Fuck.” He starts laughing again, has to put his glass down. 

  
“What?” Tommy says, sitting bolt upright. 

 

Lovett waves his hand dismissively. “Never mind, it’s probably only funny to me. God. I thought I knew irony but this is really something else. It’s fine, Tommy, we’ll blame the rosé and move on. This is what comes of taking me someplace so fancy that the wine to food ratio is just dangerous.” 

 

“Can you do that again but with more names?” Tommy says. He looks like he’s puzzling something out. Lovett doesn’t want him to puzzle any of this out.

 

“Nope,” Lovett says.

 

Tommy makes a few abortive noises before settling on, “Just to be clear, you... That’s what this whole sudden dating bonanza has been about? You’re trying to get over Jon? Jon  _ and  _ Emily?” His whole face is made of incomprehension, which Lovett gets but is still kind of horrible.

 

“You said I didn’t have to talk about it,” Lovett says. Tommy mutters something that sounds suspiciously like,  _ oh my fucking god _ . “I know. It’s too ridiculous to even get into, okay. I know it’s stupid and messy and messing everything up. I’m working on it.” He laughs again, way too loudly. “Come on, Tommy Vietor, let’s get the check and get out of here before they throw me out for being bad for the ambience.” He doesn’t care if people want to look, but he’s done with being an object of confusion for now. “Let me buy you a drink. Somewhere cheaper and gayer.”

 

“Luckily, we live in West Hollywood,” Tommy says, flagging down the waiter in one smooth monied asshole move. “Or I guess that’s not so much of a coincidence, seeing as you got here first and the rest of us had to suck it up to see you ever.”

 

Lovett grins at him. “Cheap and gay, that’s me.” 

 

When they get to the bar Tommy says, “Hey, give me a sec, I just to have call... someone. You go in and get me a drink.”

 

Lovett rolls his eyes but goes in anyway, gets them seats at the bar and gets himself a drink. If Tommy wants to be a mysterious weirdo he can wait and make his own convoluted whisky order. 

 

There’s a very cute dude also hovering at the bar who smiles at Lovett. He automatically smiles back. 

 

“Are you waiting for someone or just indecisive?” the dude asks. He’s got a really good smile, the right side of cocky. 

 

Lovett tilts his head. “Waiting, but for a friend. He’s outside sappily calling his fiance and pretending it’s some kind of important business call, so I’m single-people punishing him by not ordering in advance. You?”

 

The dude gives him the small nod that you give someone for sliding their relationship status vaguely gracefully into a conversation. “Oh, I’m just indecisive. Living those bisexual stereotypes and all that.” 

 

Lovett laughs, sharp with the genuine surprise of it. It’s a good feeling. He says, “Hey, so, I tragically committed to this friend thing and I owe him, like, at least seven by now, but can I get your number?”

 

He can’t even remember the last time he asked for a guy’s number. Maybe people don’t ask for numbers any more. Maybe he has just outed himself as out of the game. But he’s got to start going for things.

 

“Sure,” the dude says. “I’ll put it in your contacts and then you can learn my name too.”

 

“Well, shit,” Lovett says and puts his head down on the bar. 

 

*

 

“Dinner tonight?” Jon says in between the pod and the ad slog, sitting with Leo on his lap, both of them looking at Lovett with identical hopeful smiles. 

 

Lovett is about to say yes and then, “Oh, shit, can’t, sorry. I’m meeting someone for drinks. I’m not calling it a date because that’s been a rough and indeed rocky road. But I could come around after?” 

 

Jon jerks and Leo yips small hurt surprise at him. “Sorry, sorry, buddy,” Jon says to him. He doesn’t look back up. “If you want to, yeah. Yeah, of course. Or we can do it tomorrow. How about tomorrow?”

 

“Sure?” Lovett says. 

 

Tommy clears his throat. “Hey, Lovett, can we check your levels again? I think you pulled your headphones out. Again.”

 

“One time!” Lovett protests. 

 

He doesn’t notice that it’s a distraction until it’s way too late, until Jon finally pipes back up again, still mostly hidden behind Leo, and everything has moved on and it’s time to shill a million people some underwear again, because this is their life now. 

 

Jon's quiet throughout the rest of the day, retreats behind his computer, and Lovett can't stop thinking about it, just wants to prod that sore spot until the, well, if he's doing this metaphor right, the gross pus of feelings comes out. He’s done it a hundred times over the years, a practiced hand at being so annoying that it overrides the mortifying shyness and shame that Jon wears so easily that you wouldn’t notice it’s there half the time. The right metaphor would be something much gentler and shinier for the blushing, tentative way that Jon talks about the emotions that he thinks that he shouldn’t have. They’re the ones that Lovett treasures hearing. They’re clearly the kind that Jon is having right now and that Lovett really wants to ask about.

 

But he doesn't, and that distracts him from his pretty good date. Tyler is a self described “nodding terms acquaintance of the pod” and laughs at Lovett's jokes, but not too easily. They trade nightmare gym stories and there are no arguments about not creating a bar tab. Solid first date stuff. 

 

Lovett walks home after, which makes the brief kiss outside of the restaurant even easier to navigate. At the end of their street he hesitates, thinks about going to the Favreaus’. But he knows how it would go, that however good this date was, it will fade away in the face of their faces. 

 

“Make better choices,” he tells himself, and goes the fuck home. 

 

Of course, that’s when Emily messages him, an innocuous  _ how was your date? _ that still feels suspicious somehow, arriving as it does 30 seconds after he got in, like she was waiting for his lights to come on. Lovett does that sometimes - although he used to pretend that he wasn’t, and then fully owned that he did - keeps his own lights low and then waits to see the Black Favreau place light up. There’s a lot of symbolism to be mined there, he’s sure. 

 

The reply should be obvious - tell her about his change in luck, maybe joke about sending Tommy an edible display. Then she’ll encourage him to take up the offer of a second date that he had somehow gotten, despite admitting to being in the process of getting over someone. 

 

This isn’t bad, or hard, Lovett reminds himself. This is what their friendship is going to look like. And he could do it, he can feel it, he can see how it gets easier, how this becomes a new routine. 

 

_ He thinks my yoga jokes are VERY funny, so there. Hopeful, I think.  _

 

The response is immediate and baffling.  _ Can we come over? _

 

Lovett stares at his phone. Taps the screen a few times but that doesn’t change anything. 

 

_ Why? _

 

Her response is just  _ Please?  _

 

Lovett sighs. “This is not helpful,” he tells the universe, and types out a reply. 

 

Jon and Emily arrive at his door in what feels like seconds, can’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Emily is wearing one of Jon’s Friend of the Pod tee shirts, neck pulling wide, Jon is still in his clothes from the office, and Leo launches himself at Lovett like he hasn’t seen him for a year, which makes both of them laugh way more than it deserves. 

 

Lovett hates it when they have private jokes. 

 

“Yes?” he says raising his eyebrows. 

 

Jon puffs out his cheeks as he breathes out, his face a mess of confusion. “Lovett. We... I know I said we weren’t bad friends but we... I lied.”

 

Lovett says, “What the fuck,” over Emily saying, “Oh my god, Jon, that is  _ not  _ what we talked about.” 

 

Jon says, “I panicked?” He’s a burnt red from the tips of his ears down but he still has that face of pure dogged determination that Lovett associates more with midnight writing sessions or the first few months of Crooked. 

 

Emily gives Lovett one of their ‘what are we meant to do with him’ looks. “Let’s actually get in the house, Jonathan, and then get back on message.” 

 

Lovett backs awkwardly into his own front room, and the Favreaus follow to stand there just as awkwardly, Jon fiddling with his wedding ring. Leo runs to curl up with Pundit in the corner with a satisfied air. They all watch him go, watch them settle, and no one talks.

 

Lovett is the first one to snap. “Seriously, what the hell, stop just standing there looking at me. You asked to come over and then Jon says he’s a bad friend, which he usually never admits to even when he’s actively bullying me. What?” 

 

Jon says, “We said that we wanted you to have good dates. I said that. And it was a lie. We don’t. We just want you to come home. In fact, we don’t want you to leave.” 

 

Lovett throws up his hands, about to really start something, and Emily says, quickly, “It’s not that we don’t want you to be happy. We love you. This is... Don’t date those other people, Jon Lovett. They don’t love you like we do.” Jon nods beside her.

 

“We all know that I can’t just hang around with the two of you forever, even though you make me-” he swallows the sick feeling down. “- you both make me super happy. That’s why I started dating again. Did you not pick that up? I thought I was pretty clear about it.” 

 

“I think maybe none of us has been as clear as we thought we were being,” Emily says. Her face has gone so pale; she’s twisting her hands over and over. Lovett keeps moisturiser in his dresser so that she can use it, her hands get dry and she rubs patches raw when she’s stressed, and it’s so weird that he’s thinking about that right now. “So. This is us saying, um - asking you out. We think we could make you even happier. So. We’re throwing our hat into the ring.” She actually mimes throwing a hat like the dork that she is. 

 

Lovett blinks at her. “You’re... You two are married. You’re married and Jon is -”

 

“In love with you,” Jon says croakily. He’s taken one of Emily’s hands in his and is clinging onto it desperately. “Sorry, I didn’t notice for kind of a while.”

 

Lovett sits, heavily, on his coffee table because it’s too far to a chair. “That’s my line. I’m having to get over being in love with you. Over, like, I don’t even know how, the Favreaus. You were going to tell me that you knew and didn’t want to make it awkward. That night you came home from Italy, after I fucked up with the vows and bled weird messy gay nonsense into the middle of your pastel wedding dream.” Saying it feels about as disastrous as he was expecting it to. There’s not even any relief at getting the whole thing out there, just panic that clogs up his throat. 

 

Jon pulls away from Emily and kneels in front of him. “You made the vows perfect, Lovett. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Couldn’t stop talking to Emily about them, about what you’d said to her, about what it meant to me to know those things.” He puts his hand out and it’s shaking.  _ Why is he shaking? _ Lovett’s brain repeats over and over.  _ Why the fuck is he shaking? _ “You’re right, we just got married, and that makes looking at the future much simpler, and we wanted you with us. We want you, however you’d be willing to have us. That’s what we were going to ask you when we got home.” Jon’s voice is even more earnest than usual, somehow, and his hands are both still shaking on Lovett’s knees. 

 

Lovett can’t think through this at all, can’t really even breathe through it. “That’s not what I thought you were going to say,” he manages. He tries to remember, with clarity and not cringingy misery, what they had looked like that night. Nervous. Awkward. People with something difficult to say. 

 

Emily comes closer, puts her hand on Jon’s shoulder, and he leans into her side gratefully. He always looks like this when she comes home, like suddenly the world turns a little easier for him.

 

“We couldn’t stop talking about you, all honeymoon,” Jon says, flushing harder.

 

Lovett recalls with brutal clarity just how well fucked Jon had looked when they’d come back, and his throat goes dry. “You’re not into men,” he says. “Well. You’re not into me that way. I would have known, you’re the least subtle man in the world.” He’s been faintly indulgent of Jon’s blindingly obvious mancrushes for a decade, and knew as soon as he said Emily’s name that Jon was gone on her. 

 

Jon rubs the back of his neck and then his nose, and it’s somehow the most compelling argument so far for this being real. Lost for words and uneasy tics: this seems more like Jon in love. Lovett finally gets a couple of breaths that feel like the oxygen actually goes into his lungs. Jon says, “I didn’t know, you know? I’ve always felt this way about you, but falling in love with Emily made a lot of things make sense and she... she asked.”

 

“He has always said your name in this  _ way _ ,” Emily says with a fond smile. “It seemed wise to bring it up before we got married.”

 

Lovett thinks again about straightforward Jon Favreau and the desires he hid from even himself until he met Emily and she sweetly, firmly, cracked him right open. “Did you make him talk out his gay urges or whatever?” he asks. 

 

She tilts her head. “Something like that.” 

 

“I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t have put it like that,” Jon says, and Lovett says, “I bet,” makes them both laugh. “I would have said, I don’t even know. There was a night when Emily said, said I should think about the way I feel about her, and the way I feel about Tom, and then, god, think about the way I feel about you.” 

  
Emily says, “Actually, I made him do a whole visualisation thing. But carry on, baby.” 

 

“I want to hear about that sometime,” Lovett says reflexively, his voice still weird and harsh. 

 

“Whatever you want,” Jon says with determination. “Anything you want to hear about. The honeymoon stuff was...” He glances up at Emily who is also blushing now. “Anyway. I do want you that way. Like I want Em. I know it, Lovett, I know it with absolute certainty. Okay?”

 

“I’m working on it,” Lovett says. He can’t... he can’t hold anyone’s gaze, keeps getting caught back on Jon’s hand on his knee, his own thighs, on Emily shifting her weight foot to foot. Jon says that he’s in love with him. Jon says that he always has been. This can’t be real, but the realest thing he knows is that Jon and Emily would never lie to him. He puts his hand over Jon’s, can do that much at least. The world has to rearrange itself in his head a lot of times but he can hold Jon’s hand. He can hear the smile in Jon’s voice when he says, “Lovett.” 

 

Lovett looks up at him. He met Jon so long ago now that he can’t imagine not being able to look at his face and be greeted by a warm smile, but there was a time. There was a whole other life where he didn’t have all of these people to complicate and transform his days. He was so young, and so suspicious of this smile, in the beginning. 

 

Jon says, “Sorry, I know it’s easier for you sometimes if you’re not looking but, humour me a moment? Because, it’s not just about sex, right? I’m into you and in love with you and I want you. That’s mostly what we ended up talking about, about how we fell in love with you. When you weren’t there, and we should have been the happiest people in the world, but we couldn’t be because  _ you weren’t there _ .” 

 

That actually makes Lovett make a noise. He doesn’t know where it comes from but it’s a sharp pained thing. It might be made of all the days that they were away and he was in this room trying not to feel incomplete, when he’d worked so hard to make a whole life. Other people shouldn’t have that power to wield so casually over him, and he sure as shit doesn’t know if he should have it over Jon and Emily. 

 

Emily starts to reach for Lovett and then pulls back in on herself. “Then we got back and you were talking about dating and we thought... we thought maybe you knew something, that we’d made you uncomfortable by dragging you into our wedding too much, or I’d said something too weird when we were all drunk, or, something. You were so certain about a fresh start and determined about not seeing us as much. About dating.”

 

Jon picks up the sentence in the space of a breath, “And why shouldn’t you be? Why shouldn’t you just want to find someone and not have to navigate all of our bullshit, and the complications, and all our basic nonsense that drives you fucking crazy. So we tried to be your good friends, because that’s what you wanted. But then Tommy called us -”

 

“ - from outside the bar, oh man, he is somewhere laughing so hard about this,” Lovett groans. Of course Tommy had worked it all out from Lovett’s drunk blurting. 

 

“He knew something was wrong so I told him about how we’d fucked up by wanting to date you. But then he said you thought you’d fucked up by wanting to date us? So we wanted to... To clarify. We had this whole plan for tonight, like we had a whole plan for that first night, but nothing seemed to go  _ right _ ,” Jon says with a frustrated noise.

 

“If you’d just told me in advance about the plan, this might have gone much easier,” Lovett points out. He sort of can’t believe just how stupid they’ve all been, trying and trying and failing at normal friendship. God, they’re all very smart people.

 

Jon sighs like he’s thinking the same thing. “Look, what do you even say?  _ Lovett, do you want to date me and my wife? Don’t worry, we know you’re gay but we both love you? Your best friend just realised he’s wanted to kiss you forever, can we work something out, at least? Come to dinner so that we can try and hash this out, we promise to love you whatever happens. Oh, and bring wine? _ ” There’s a familiar frenzied edge to his voice. 

 

“You want to date me,” Lovett says, which is where his brain has decided to get stuck. “Both of you. Like. Romantic date me.” Jon had been cooking, that night they came back, and Emily had done her three-stage eyeshadow. They'd put Lovett-friendly music on. All of that effort just to ask if he might consider something, anything he wanted, all his terms, these beautiful people who he loves more than anything thinking he might need persuading to want them back. The sheer kindness of it cuts, painful and lovely, through the fog of terror in his mind. 

 

“Yes,” Emily says. “I know that you don’t want to like, fuck me or whatever, and if you just want Jon, like... like that, if you just want his hat to be in the ring and we can carry on being best friends only then that’s fine. Maybe nothing much will change between us even if we do decide we want something more romantic. However you want to make it work, as long as you want to make it work. ” She says it like it’s so simple. Maybe it is. 

 

“What do  _ you  _ want?” Lovett asks her. He wishes for a white hot moment that he could kiss her with the love that’s overflowing in his chest, kiss out all this devastating hope that has built up in him. 

 

“I want you to be ours,” Emily says. 

 

Lovett blinks furiously. “Stupid,” he says, has to breathe a few times, almost angry. “Why would you be asking for something you already have?” 

 

“Lovett, no, don’t cry,” Emily says, crumpling down into Jon, who is reaching for Lovett and then they’re all in a heap, sobbing into each other’s shoulder. Lovett’s never been more relieved to have befriended other easy criers. Be-more-than-friended. Besotted, that’s what he is. 

 

Jon has his arm around Lovett somehow, almost in his lap at this point, head against Lovett’s chest, and he’s saying something that Lovett can’t hear. “Jon. Hey. All I’m getting is cloth noises,” he says into Jon’s shoulder. 

 

“You’re cloth noises,” Jon says and Emily punches him on the arm. “Jesus. Lovett. I can’t believe you’re pissed with Em for not knowing! You were dating other people!” 

 

“I am  _ not  _ pissed with Em, she’s my favourite,” Lovett says. “How else do you get over people? Your best friends? I tried not seeing you but Emily kidnapped me.” 

 

Emily rearranges herself against Jon, leaning into Lovett, head almost on his shoulder like she has to connect them all up. She’s still sniffing in a way that means she could just start bawling again at any minute. “I missed you so much,” she says. 

 

“We both did,” Jon puts in. 

 

Emily pulls a face at him. “You got to see him at work! I was entirely Lovett-less, it sucked. Hard.” She looks like he broke her heart. 

 

Lovett clears his throat. “So. Fuck. Okay. If you did want to throw your hat in here, too, it would be the two of you, I’d have the two of you? That’s what you were saying, right?” This feels like the part he can process first, and he can find the required bravery if it’s to stop Emily from looking so sad. Jon is an adult lifetime of stupid yearning, peaks and troughs of it but never quite stopping, plus unhelpful suggestions from his lust brain. That’s for later, when all of them aren’t crying and the dogs aren’t panicking around their feet. He picks Pundit up, hides his face in her fur for a moment, breathes in uncomplicated love. 

 

“If you wanted. It’s what we want,” Emily says. “I missed you like I miss Jon, I want... I want us to be something together more though, so if you want something else I can work with it. But. Yeah. You want to hear about how much we adore you? We adore you. I adore you.”

 

Lovett nods, makes an encouraging noise. 

 

Emily laughs. “More? Okay. I want you all to ourselves, every night if you can stand it, you and Pundit and all your consoles, because you’re our Lovett. If maybe you wanted to kiss me good morning that would be nice.” She gives him an awkward little shrug. It’s very darling. “I want you and Jon to get to be together.” 

 

Lovett takes a deep breath and actually looks at Jon. He looks so hopeful it’s physically painful. Lovett pulls a face, and like a coward looks back at Emily. “Some of that, all of that sounds... It sounds good.” It’s Favreau face good, in fact, so bright that he can’t look directly at it. “Perfect. It’s just...”

 

“Terrifying?” Jon says. Lovett nods. Jon reaches for his hand, tangles them together in Pundit’s fur. He says, “Lovett. Jon. I don’t... I don’t know what I can say to make you believe me; believe in this.”

 

Lovett shakes his head, eyes prickling again. He watches Jon out of the corner of his eye, sees the guilt. “That’s not, it’s not on you, Favreau. I don’t think there’s anything that magically makes me able to process the idea that my straight best friend somehow fell for me. You’ve been the ultimate off-limits for ever. Lots of mental boxes to unbox.”  

 

“Not so straight,” Jon says, with a bashful smile, like something out of a teenage fantasy or maybe classy arthouse porn. Just put him in black and white and put a dick in his mouth. 

 

Lovett screeches his brain away from  _ that _ . “That is one of the boxes, and it’s a pretty sizeable box!” Emily snickers at him. “Mind out of the gutter,” he tells her primly. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Jon, I just-” He makes a frustrated noise at himself. He wishes he were a person who could be better at this.

  
“What if I kissed you?” Jon says, low. Low and sincere and  _ hungry _ . 

 

Lovett swallows. “You are a very direct problem solver,” he says, trying to scrape together some kind of actual response to this. To Jon moving somehow closer, watching Lovett’s eyes and his mouth with gentle intensity. He’s been this close to Jon on multiple occasions but he’s never been the person that Jon is about to kiss before and it changes... everything. It is a moment almost unparalleled in his life. He swallows again like that might help.

 

Jon says, “Is that a yes?” 

 

“Yes,” Lovett says and Jon’s mouth is on his before he’s closed out the syllable. The kiss doesn’t even last that long, but it’s the best Lovett’s had in years, firm and sweet. Jon Favreau’s mouth  _ on his,  _ carefully kissing him like that’s the only thing Jon wants in the world, and it’s just as good as he’d been hoping. It’s just as good as Lovett had tried not to think of. Jon is really boss level difficulty on not thinking about someone’s mouth. 

 

Jon pulls away just enough to say, “You’re smiling.” 

 

Lovett nods. “Of course I am.” He still feels like he’s stood too close to a bell when it was struck but, as usual with Jon’s plans, somehow it worked. Cutting through the bullshit with a kiss. Fucking hell. “Do it again,” he tries, and Jon  _ does, _ just grins, so handsome, and kisses him again. Lovett could get used to this. “Is he always this eager?” he asks Emily, feels Jon smile against his cheek.

 

Emily is flushed, nestled up against Jon’s side with an intent expression. “Pretty much,” she says, rolling her eyes. 

 

“God, how do you even stand it?” Lovett says hopelessly; he’s only two kisses in and he feels like he’s drowning in Jon’s open, willing heart. 

 

“You mostly don’t,” Emily says, and then puts her hand between them, turns Jon’s face and kisses him. Lovett’s not alone, Emily is here and they’ll mock Jon and love him best in the same beat, just like they have since the moment he introduced himself to her and she said, “Hi Jon Lovett, so Jon should grow his hair out, right? This cut is no good. Apparently the opinion of his girlfriend isn’t enough so I’m roping in everyone I can, and gay best friend is a key demographic.” Jon had gone all head-ducking and word-flubbing at the use of the word ‘girlfriend’ and they’d just been away. 

 

Watching them kiss from this close is mesmerising, not sexy, exactly, but fascinating in its details and its intimacy. He says, “This is... this works for me. I still, I don’t know how the fuck we are going to make this actually  _ work  _ work but... This I like.” The three of them, kiss-close but actually kissing now. Jon smiling soft into their mouths. Emily getting his half formed thoughts as he says them. 

 

Jon turns back to him, actually beaming all over his stupid face now. “We can take it slow, if you want? Em?” 

  
“Slow sounds good to me. Lovett?” Emily asks, and they both pull back just a fraction to give him space to think.

 

Lovett really fucking loves them, all the time and extra in this moment, and that’s what makes it easy to say, “Yes.” He leans his head onto Jon’s shoulder. “I was trying so hard not to want you. That’s what I’ve been doing. That’s why Tommy thought I was sad. It messed me up. So, yeah, slow sounds good to me. Not  _ too _ slow but, with time for all of us. No more messing anyone up.” He’s fifty-fifty on them calling it off, which is way higher than he usually feels about anyone reciprocating real feelings, so that’s a win. But he still wants them to have time to rethink, or take a different approach, for all of them to change their minds on how they want things. 

 

Being an adult about dating is wild.

 

Emily wipes her eyes again. “Sorry, it’s just... We made you sad. You were trying to fix it all by yourself for us, and even now, you’re still trying to be so kind,” she says in a rush. “Don’t pull that face. You are. And, I... I love you,” she adds with a defiant chin tilt. It’s not that Lovett forgets that she has a spine of fucking steel but, god. 

 

“So you two keep saying,” Lovett says, resisting the very strong urge to put his red hot face in her shoulder. 

 

Lovett has always known that he was lucky in that he was loved, but ‘lucky’ cuts both ways in the longer darker nights of the soul. Luck can change and luck can run out. Luck isn’t merit. Jon and Emily, though, they know him down to every shadowy, nightmare corner and they still love him, say that they are incomplete without him, somehow. He’s going to have to work very hard on this, and there’s a rising excitement in him to do the work. 

 

He catches Jon’s eyes, makes the face that means, _ let’s go, co-conspirator _ , and sees Jon get it. “You too,” Lovett says. It’s a start. 

 

The smile that breaks over Jon’s face is a wonder. “Really?” he says, tearing up again. 

 

“Oh my god, if I kiss you again will you stop crying?” Lovett says without much hope. He tries it anyway, grinning helplessly into Jon’s mouth as Emily says, “Oh, I wish that worked, babe. Believe me, I’ve tried.” 

 

Jon breaks away to say, “Hey now!” and Lovett starts to laugh. He’s usually the one trying and trying to puncture the tension in a situation; it’s kind of cool to be on the other side of it, the one who just gets to laugh. Lovett leans up and kisses Emily on the cheek, because joy should be shared.

 

“Not that I’m not very here for watching you two make out, and wouldn’t be here for watching you cover even more bases,” Emily says, with a shrug. “What? Just putting that out there. I don’t want to pretend otherwise.” 

 

“You haven’t taken me out on a date yet, Black Favreaus,” Lovett says as pickily as he dares. “I wouldn’t have called that making out, either.” 

 

Emily raises an eyebrow. “Hey, husband, you ready to make out with Lovett yet or do you want to take him out first before I ask you to do that?” 

 

“Well, that is certainly something to think over,” Lovett says. He knows. He knows how they go, that Emily is in charge, that’s what they like, and not always in a just casual way that she is in all of their lives. He’s masochistically asked for details about their sex life from a two-drinks-in Emily, and he’s maybe thought about it recently, once or twice. Emily asking and Jon doing. Or Emily not asking.  _ Telling _ . 

 

Jon goes abruptly scarlet, like he’s somehow unaware that Lovett knows all about his proclivities, and Emily presses the back of her hand to his flaming cheek and laughs. “As you might be able to tell, we’ve thought about it a lot. You said you’d think about it too? Before our date?”

 

“Honestly? It’s going to be tough to think about anything else,” Lovett says. He breaks into a smile that he knows is embarrassing, and leans in to kiss Jon again, slightly more lingering this time, biting at Jon’s bottom lip just a little. “When are we doing this date? What counts as slow for you? This weekend?” Jon’s eagerness is catching, apparently.

 

“Technically I already booked you for tomorrow,” Jon says. Lovett had forgotten, in all of this, that he had a whole other timeline worked out. His life looked very different a half hour ago. 

 

Lovett pats him on the shoulder. “Well, instead of that, you barged into my house tonight, didn't you?” 

 

“What if we'd missed our chance?” Jon says in a small voice. “You really liked that guy. We couldn't risk it.” Lovett hates it when Jon looks afraid. It sits all wrong on his face and his body, which were so clearly built for a blessed existence. “Sorry about the barging.”

 

“No you’re not,” Lovett says, curling his hand around the back of Jon’s neck and meeting Emily’s hand there. He interlinks his fingers with hers. “I can’t believe all it fucking took was one nice date to get you running to fall at my feet. God. I would not have wasted all of that time on jackasses, I could have invented a pleasant dude in a heartbeat. His name is Jamie and I met him walking Pundit. He doesn’t usually like dogs but he loved her. He took me to a Mexican place and ate with his hands. He thought my joke about police horses was underrated.”

 

“We love Pundit,” Jon says sullenly.

 

“Oh my god, Favreau, I literally just made this guy up,” Lovett says. His face is doing a thing that he can already feel Tommy giving him shit for. 

 

“He’s got some pent up issues that have been building a while,” Emily says, kissing Jon’s cheek. “Like. A lot. It’s not about the made-up men, although it is a bit, it’s about him not getting to be the one to make you happy. Which I do too, but it’s not like, pathological.”

 

“Hey,” Jon objects, and then ruins it immediately by looking at Lovett through his goddamn eyelashes and saying, “I do want to make you happy, though. I really do.” 

 

Lovett shakes his head helplessly. “I know, Jon. I know.”

  
  


*

 

Waiting until the weekend seemed like a good idea in the moment, in the hazy, just-kissed fugue, when Lovett was sure that he needed time and clarity. But a day of time and clarity mostly just brings impatience and anxiety. 

 

Tommy just straight up removes his headphones during an ad read on day two and puts his head on the table. “I am going to write ‘remember that you’re happy for them’ on my mirror in lipstick to remind me every day,” he says with despair. 

 

“What?” Lovett says. Usually he can tell what’s driven Tommy to the brink but he’s been good today, he thinks. Mostly. Tommy turns his face but doesn’t lift his head and stares at him. Tommy has yet to ever actually find Lovett too much and very probably won’t start now, which Lovett honestly, embarrassingly loves about him, but Lovett is still weirdly thrown by not knowing why Tommy is looking so done with him. He wants to reach for Jon. 

 

Tommy horizontally rolls his eyes. “It’s like high school in here, with the two of you giggling at each other, and wanting to touch each other but never quite touching each other, and throwing shit at each other to relieve the sexual tension. Both of you in your fucking corners wondering if that boy really does think you’re pretty enough to take to fucking prom. I’m dying over here.” 

 

Lovett glances over at Jon who is trying to laugh through some kind of apocalyptically epic bashful mouth situation. “I have  _ not  _ been doing that,” he says. “I’ve been extremely restrained about this whole situation, Tommy, you don’t even know.” How are you even meant to react to your two best friends telling you that they’re in love with you, and you kind of tell them back, and you wanted to date them to try and refine the parameters of this possible relationship, but you still see them every day while you don’t know what you are to each other? He is being  _ very chill _ .

 

“I do even know,” Tommy says, sitting up. He fake glares over at Jon, all warm underneath it. “No one knows it evener than I do, Lovett. Who do you think that loser has been offloading to?” He doesn’t mention the shrill nonsense that Lovett vomited out last night while they ostensibly walked the dogs for so long that they both needed carrying home. For which Lovett is very grateful; the tempting safety of dusk is way too dangerous and confessional. 

 

“You asked!” Jon yelps. He glances at Lovett like he’s been doing all day, a half shy assessment like he just wants to ask Lovett ‘whatcha thinking?’, which he probably does. “He asked.”

 

“Oh, like we all didn’t finally give up on the illusion of privacy when we started this office,” Lovett says as a mollifier. 

 

“Please just go home and start - I’m not going to ruin the surprise, Favreau, calm down, start preparing for your damn date and just do it,” Tommy says. He turns fully in his chair to look at them. “For all of us. Go away.”

 

Lovett glances over to where Mukta is blissfully ignoring them to work on her laptop and Eliza is on her phone clearly texting. “We can’t. Can we?”

 

“I’ll text Em,” Jon says, already getting his phone out. “What?” he says with a shrug. “It’s our company, we’re basically done for the day anyway. I’m good to go.”

 

Tommy waves them away, stops just short of actually pulling them out of their chairs and pushing them out of the studio. “Have fun!” he says brightly as they leave. “Be gentle with hearts, minds, and dicks!”

 

“You’re a terrible friend,” Lovett says, backing out of the room. “Just the worst.” 

 

The date is dinner, and Lovett only has to get to the Favreaus’, so he fills the rest of the afternoon with giving Pundit a bath and then pacing around his house not overthinking it. He knows what he wants. He knows what he wants to say. He knows what he’s going to wear. No second guessing. 

 

There’s a brief moment where he considers messaging his sister to ask what married people are into, clothing wise, but that luckily passes faster than he can act on. So it's back to lapping his front room, Pundit follows him on skittering paws, still comically bad at turning sharply. “Hi best dog,” he says, and scoops her up as she flails to a stop. “Ready for our date? I mean, it’s not a date for you, the only dog option there is your brother, so. You’re kind of more like my wingman, ‘kay?” She licks his face, which he'll take as a yes. “They love you, I can totally use that to my advantage.” 

 

He hears Jon say, “love you,” again, ringing through his head as it has been for days, rolling into his brain at unexpected moments and stopping him dead as his stomach turns over and his breath catches. They love him. 

 

They  _ love _ him. 

 

If he calls Tommy about his outfit Tommy will say a lot of mean true things about the various outfits that Jon and Emily have seen him in over the years. The haircuts. The states of hungover and sleep-deprived and unwashed. And then some stuff that he would call kinder but Lovett feels are meaner, about how they love him.

 

Wanting everything and then not knowing what to do with the parts he actually gets has been a pattern he’s gotten all too used to. 

 

_ Can I come over now  _ he sends to his jonandemily group chat that he and Emily change the name of every few weeks, mainly to Jon’s confusion. 

 

_ You’ll be an hour early. Isn’t that against your personal ethos?  _ Emily sends back immediately. 

 

Lovett wonders what they’re doing, if they’re just waiting too, if they’re as nervous and hopeful as he is, if Jon is pacing the floor, if Em’s cuddling Leo. Probably the other way around. Just thinking about them thinking about him makes his stomach flip like he’s a teenager again, looking at his ill-conceived crush across the quad. 

 

Except he’s not playing  _ Could he even like me? If I could talk to him would he laugh? Ugh if I made him laugh I’d have to try and do it again  _ and other hits from the endless wheel of crap that his high school brain spun every fucking day. He wants to make them laugh forever.

 

_ Does that fuck up your very secret date plan?  _ Lovett replies. He's been very forbearing about both of them refusing to tell him anything about this date but constantly dropping hints or accidentally letting slip that they are planning, that they have plans. Schemes maybe. 

 

_ Kinda but we can make it work. Ten?  _ Emily responds, with a follow up of a tour of the heart emoji section. 

 

Lovett texts  _ sure,  _ which inevitably means he messes around for eight minutes and then has to scramble to find Pundit’s lead, decide on shoes, find both shoes, find his keys, and actually get out of the door. He’s nervous, keeps pulling at the hem of his tee shirt and tugging too hard at Pundit’s lead. Thank fuck they haven’t moved yet: even getting across the road is almost too much for him. He even knocks. 

 

Jon opens the door and Lovett just starts laughing. Jon tugs at his collar and says, “That’s not... exactly the reaction I was hoping for, I’ll be honest.” 

 

“I can’t believe you remembered some throwaway thing I said about you being in a suit the next time,” Lovett says, trying to pull himself back away from the edge of hysteria. Jon’s wearing - of course he’s wearing - the grey suit he bought for a wedding a couple of years ago and he looks, of course he looks, incredible. 

 

Jon laughs too, although it’s in that way he does sometimes where he hasn’t quite got all the way to the punchline yet. “When you really want to date someone, you kind of tend to remember things they say about ideal dates, Lovett.” 

 

“Cool,” Lovett says. What else are you meant to say in the face of that face telling you how important you are?

 

There’s no cooking happening in the kitchen this time, but Lovett still feels a swooping sense of déjà vu. Except Emily comes over and kisses his cheek, very tenderly, and then Jon does the same on the other cheek. Emily says, “Hi Lovett,” in a shy voice. 

 

“I’m really looking forward to the bit where we all stop feeling weird about this,” Lovett says. He hates it when he feels like he does with other people when he’s not, he’s with his people. “Although, again, I like the effort of the suit.” 

 

Emily straightens Jon’s collar with one easy, proprietary touch. Neither of them have really moved away from him at all, Jon hip and Emily arm still pressed against his sides. “And one of your playlists. And Mexican food that you can eat with your hands. Leo might be in a bowtie but it’s really hard to say by now. He might have taken in off and hidden it under the chair where he puts Bad Things.” 

 

“You’re so dumb, I love you so much,” Lovett says. “Fuck. Well. That’s that said. Can I also go under the chair now?”

 

“You’re not a bad thing,” Jon says with uncalled for sincerity. He leans in and asks the question with his eyebrows, and, when Lovett nods, he kisses him. Lovett leans into him, finds himself slipping an arm around Emily as he moves into Jon’s touch, opens up for Jon to kiss him generously. “See,” Jon says. “We’re going to get the hang of this in no time.” He kisses Lovett again like a full stop. 

 

“Always the optimist,” Lovett says. 

 

“Don’t pretend you’re not,” Jon says, and it’s all so familiar it hurts Lovett’s chest in a way that he can’t explain. He wonders how many years they’ve been in love. He kisses Jon again, leans into Emily some more, and it helps, and he says, “It’s easier when I’m with you two.” 

 

Jon smiles like that’s the best thing he’s ever heard, hand coming up to cup the back of Lovett’s neck. “That was pretty romantic, Jon Lovett.” 

 

“It has been known to happen,” Lovett says. “I did also say that I loved you, don’t know if anyone heard that one. In just as romantic a way, I’m sure you will recall.” 

 

Emily nuzzles his neck a little and Lovett has to take a moment, because that’s usually a sexual touch, and he turns his face a little to see hers, but she’s just smiling into him, and... he’s going to be okay with it, he decides. Even if she sometimes touches him in ways that always just make him shiver. That’s okay. Scary but okay. Emily says, “Hey? You alright?” 

 

“I don’t think a girl’s ever done that to me before,” Lovett explains. “But I’m cool with it.” It’s a slight piece of bravado but it’s what he needs. “We can work out our... touching ways.” 

 

“Love language,” Emily says in a way that Lovett wishes were ironic and fully knows isn’t. 

 

“Jesus,” he mutters. “I’m dating the whitest people in the world.”

 

He feels Jon draw in a breath. “You - you are?” 

 

Lovett draws himself back from them both. “Right, before I actually fuck this up, come on - we sit, we talk, then we do our date. We can carry on after I’ve said what I need to say, I can’t wait until after. I’ll just do it wrong if I have to hold it all in my head. I know... I think I know what I want, which is about as good as it gets with me, so, let’s go.” He pulls Emily to the breakfast bar by the hand which leaves Jon to sit on the other side of it across from them. Lovett keeps hold of her hand. 

 

“I know that you had a plan - plans, whatever - but, you don’t need to seduce me, and I think we’ve had enough time and false starts and all that bullshit. It’s been years, really. I’ve thought about it and I still really want... to date both of you, even though dating is kind of a bullshit word for this. I want... I want Jon to be, I don’t know, my boyfriend, and I want Em to be mine too.” He looks at their hands for a long moment, trying to remember all the things he wanted to say, to explain. Emily squeezes his hand. He takes a breath. “I don’t know what to call it but I know it’s not best friends, that’s not what I want with you, babe.”  _ Something to him that no one else is. _

 

“It’s easier for me,” Emily says, reaching across with her other hand for Jon. “My two Jons.” She looks back at Lovett with her work face on, her planning face that reminds him of a lot of nights spent over seating plans, or hanging out to write while she helped people brand changing the world from her sofa in a fleece hoodie. “I like the idea of being something more than best friends. Will you... I’m used to touching Jon in certain ways, it’s how I think of dating, so, you need to tell me when I cross a line for you, okay? I can take it.”

 

Lovett nods. “It’s kind of cool, that you put us in the same bracket in your brain. But, I’ll say if I need to stop something. I guess things will become clearer in practice. God, there’s so much fucking talking involved in a threeway. This is such a fucking con.” 

 

“Just a long game to get you to talk about your feelings more,” Jon says, covering his smile with his hand. “Like when we spend three days talking about getting drinks with ‘just the three of us like the old days’ and make Tommy fess up stuff when he’s compromised by beer and nostalgia.” 

 

Lovett rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine, I’ll talk about my feelings as much as you want if that’s what it takes. That’s my actual romantic declaration. I’m not giving up my heteronormative bro jokes, though, I worked long and hard for those.” 

 

“I don’t know, settling down with a wife, your best friend and a couple of dogs, that sounds pretty normative to me,” Emily says. “I meant Jon, by the way, you don’t have to do any settling.” 

 

“I don’t think anyone would ever call you two something you settle for,” Lovett says. “Look, i don’t think I’m ever going to want anything more than coming home to you guys and the dogs and all that shit, this is the future liberals want, etcetera etcetera, but then I didn’t know I wanted this. I’m pretty sure I’ll always want this, though.” The shape of the future is so much less shadowy but he only wants to make promises that he knows he’ll be able to keep, and he tells them as much. 

 

“I could listen to you say ‘come home to us’ forever,” Jon says, completing the circle of hands by reaching out, demanding Lovett’s with crooked fingers. “I think about it all the time, all the time, Lovett, it’s like the tamest playboy channel in the world in here; just you on the other end of the sofa, Pundit and Leo curled up in one bed, what your face would do when I brought you Starbucks in bed with Em’s. Working on prep for the pod together and then kissing you goodnight when I go to bed and you stay up playing games. It’s like that twenty four seven.” 

 

“Me too,” Lovett says, very quickly before it makes him cry. “But I was led to believe you were having more sex about me than that implies.” 

 

“Oh,” Jon says pinkly. “Yeah. I wish, I wish Em could tell you about that, she’s way better at it than me.” Emily laughs at that, smug as hell.

 

“We could try that sometime,” Lovett says. “But I also definitely want to make you tell me about it. In detail.” There’s still a part of him that is thrown by actually doing this with Jon, with every indecent word that he gets to  _ mean _ . “There’s a strong possibility that I’m going to stop in the middle of sex to make you tell me I’m not dreaming, so you might as well fess up some fantasies as well.” 

 

He catches Emily’s eye and feels that burst of feeling, the start of something you know, you just know is going to be a  _ blast _ , this first day of summer love that he gets to keep. 

 

Jon beams across at them, and Lovett can feel it on his skin. “Like you said, Lo, that kind of thing is easier when I have the two of you.” 

 

“Sex bravery?” Lovett asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“All bravery,” Jon says. “Everything and the whole damn world.” It’s a very Jon Favreau declaration. 

 

Emily lifts up his hand and kisses his knuckles like a bestowal of favour. “I love you,” she says and Jon brightens, every time like it’s the first time. “Go order us food so that you can eat it with your hands and beat that made-up date dude for once and for all.” 

 

“Come kiss me first,” Lovett says, giddy brave. Jon does, comes around the counter so fast he almost slips, Pundit-like, as he takes the corner. “Keen,” Lovett says approvingly, and pulls him in by the collar, kisses him on his keen mouth that’s waiting for him just like Lovett is always wanting to kiss it. He’s going to lose count, soon, of how many times he’s been kissed by Jon Favreau. Wild. 

 

Jon knows Lovett’s order down to the number of sides, and they sit in front of the television to eat, and all of Lovett’s plans for doing First Date bits accidentally slide away in familiar routines. With half a fish taco left he remembers and says, “Aw fuck, I was going to make you tell me about your jobs and tease out amusing anecdotes about coworkers and stuff. Have opinions about wine. The getting to know you spiel.”

 

“My coworkers are your coworkers, Lovett,” Jon says. “You know all the anecdotes. And Tommy's the only person we know has opinions about wine and I think they taught him all of them at boarding school. Which, again, is something you know.”

 

“Ugh, so boring, you never play along with me,” Lovett says in a universe-endingly sized piece of lying. 

 

“First date stuff is awful, we all know that,” Emily says, pouring them all more wine. “Although I am happy to try and extract more embarrassing stories about Jon and Tommy in the office. In return we can try and impress you with how funny and smart we are.” 

 

“That’s my line,” Lovett says. “Come on now.” He is prepared to lead them away from this, maybe make some crack about finally dating someone his dad will approve of, but then all of a sudden Jon is tugging him across the sofa, half into his lap, and saying, “Lovett. We’re impressed, okay?”

 

Lovett doesn’t know what to do with his hands for a second, but then instinct kicks in - hot dude, sofa, wanting hands on him, so he straddles Jon with a laugh. “Oh yeah?” he says, just about sticking the landing. 

  
“Yeah,” Jon says, with a delighted, incredulous smile. Lovett waits a moment to see if things get weird after that first automatic move, but there’s just this amazing guy that he has under him and it’s his Jon and that’s... cool. 

 

“I’m cool with this,” he says, which makes Jon laugh way too hard, shaking Lovett in his lap with the force of it.

 

Jon says, “That’s probably good if we’re going to do this in a long-term kind of way. That you’re cool with this.” He skims his hands up Lovett’s sides, just the good side of ticklish, which is absolutely a move that Lovett has seen him pull with multiple women. Which is distressingly hot. 

 

“You’re totally hot for saying long-term, aren’t you,” Lovett says, kind of breathy but he’ll take it. “We all know you snuck off for a quickie at the wedding. Just how much sex did you have in Italy? Did you get hard literally every time Emily called you her husband or just every other time?” 

 

“I had to stop because I was worried his dick was going to break,” Emily says, suddenly close behind. She kisses Lovett on the side of the head, so fast and fleeting that she has to be nervous. “I’m going to take the dogs out and, hey, do you want to take my husband to bed?”

 

Lovett turns her head to look up at her. “Are you coming up too? Or staying here? I can’t... can you just tell me what your plan is?” he asks. He feels like there must be a better, cooler, smoother way of doing this, of  _ being _ this. He has friends who are poly, who are open, there are so many people doing this and they must be doing things way better than that. 

 

Jon pulls him in closer, more of an embrace now than... whatever position you make out in, and Lovett can feel all the strength in his arms. He doesn’t say anything, but Lovett knows that he knows, like Jon is so close he could feel the uncertainty creep in under Lovett’s skin. 

 

“I don’t really have a plan, I’m just making this up as I go along,” Emily says, perching on the arm of the sofa. “Sorry.” 

 

“That’s okay, I kinda like that idea, the three of us failing upwards through this relationship,” Lovett says. One of his favourite secrets about them is their sham ways that they hide under a layer of gloss, money, and attractiveness. 

 

“You don’t seem so okay,” Emily says, finding Jon’s hand to hold. “Do you want me to have a plan?” 

 

“I was doing so well, I was all cool with stuff!” Lovett pouts. “And now I’m all like,  _ oh, what are we doing, where will everyone sit _ , like I’m planning a state dinner. I was not good at that shit, Emily.”

 

“I’m great at that, like, Alyssa-level good. We got this,” Emily says with a firm nod. “Now is the part of the plan where you tell me what you want. Jon wants you to take him to bed. I know the signs, believe me.” Lovett looks at Jon and it does map, his expression and the way his hands keep roaming over Lovett in less and less platonic areas; he’s seen Jon get like this with Emily at the end of parties. Sometimes at the beginning of parties. 

 

He says, “I don’t want you to think I’m too slutty if I let you bang me after one date, you know? Otherwise I’m down with it.”

 

“Oh, damn, I was really hoping you were going to make a joke about being easy, that would have been a really good set up,” Jon says. 

 

“A joke about being hard or about me being difficult?” Lovett asks which makes Jon smile his fond smile. “Oh, both. I see it would have been both.” 

  
“We like you easy and difficult. And slutty, if you’re into that,” Emily says. “Although I think nearly a decade of foreplay is probably enough for it not to be considered too forward, Miss Lovett. We won’t think badly of your virtue.”

 

She’s right, and Lovett knows it, and he knows that they think higher of him than he deserves, and they’ve all been waiting and wanting, waiting for too long and wanting so much it made them really fucking stupid. There’s never a perfect time to leap, and that’s never stopped him from jumping before.

 

“Then I’m good with taking Jon to bed,” Lovett says, way too quickly to be casual.

 

Jon shivers all over, and Lovett cackles in delight. Jon says, “God, your stupid laugh,” and reaches up to cup Lovett’s cheek. “Can Em come too? Just to be with us, just, like to watch?” Lovett looks at him for a moment, tries to weigh up everything. It’s complicated but that’s the point, and he’s never imagined this in a way that excludes Emily. And he knows for sure that Jon will feel more confident if Emily is there, and he’s starting to think he would too. He nods. 

 

“You go on up, then, I’ll sexile the puppies,” Emily says. 

  
“Never say that again within my hearing,” Lovett says, turning his face so that she can kiss him before she kisses Jon. 

 

Getting to their bedroom is so quick that Lovett doesn’t have any time to panic, doesn’t even have to think about where to go, might as well be in his own house at this point. It’s a mess of pillows and Starbucks cups and fucking Parachute sheets that Lovett considers making a crack about but can’t quite get to in time, because Jon half tackles him with a kiss. 

 

“Just push me on the bed like you clearly want to, you caveman,” Lovett says when he gets a breath in edgeways, and Jon laughs and does, half lifts him and half pushes them both down onto the bed, drowning Lovett in kisses. Lovett laughs, just outside of disbelieving. “Oh, fine, okay, if that’s how this is, take your shirt off, Favreau, c’mon.” 

 

Jon kneels up between his legs and starts to unbutton his shirt, swears, and just pulls it off over his head. 

 

“Heathen,” Lovett says, not really mustering too much disapproval. Jon has a great chest and he’s happy not to be withheld from it any longer. He pulls Jon back down to kiss him, which Jon allows for a minute and then leans back up, holding himself above Lovett. 

 

“Can I take your shirt off?” Jon asks. His hands have settled on Lovett’s shoulders and they keep twitching like he just wants to rip it off or some other crazy shit. 

 

Lovett makes a considering noise, spools it out when it clearly frustrates Jon. He settles on, “Sure, if you take off your pants.” 

 

He hadn’t counted on Jon’s stupid bro propensity for easy nakedness, because he nods and is out of his suit pants in what must be seconds, is just there, mostly naked and... waiting for Lovett to take his tee shirt off. It’s not an unfamiliar view to Lovett, but he’s never really allowed himself to enjoy it before. He’s looked, has never wanted to be one of those coy gays who avert their eyes for fear of scaring off the straight boys, but with a self defeating, masochistic enjoyment only. Looking for pleasure is new; it feels indulgent in a way that Lovett is only just about comfortable with. He’s going to have to practice. 

 

“Oh, hello - no, carry on,” Emily says. Lovett can’t see her but she sounds amused. 

  
“Lovett was just about to get topless,” Jon says giddily. “You want the chair or the bed?” 

 

Lovett keeps looking up at Jon, but he can feel the bed dip as Emily sits at the head of it, and Lovett makes an ostentatious stretch and pulls his top off because showing off for Emily sits differently in his head than taking off his clothes for a dude he’s sleeping with. A less fraught place. 

 

Lovett says, “Alright, I’m half naked, you ready to kiss me again?”

 

Jon falls on him like he hadn’t been the one to stop in the first place, with hungry biting kisses that leave Lovett’s mouth stinging gorgeously. It’s both self-interested taking and all-generous giving, which feels exactly right for Jon. Lovett bucks his hips up, runs his hands down Jon’s back, because what’s right for him is to push and push. Jon kisses his neck, makes a desperate noise into Lovett’s skin when that makes Lovett arch up and dig his nails in.

 

Lovett says, “Tell us how we look, Em.” He thinks maybe another time they do something like this he’ll reach out and have her hold his wrists down, maybe, but this time he wants to touch, doesn’t want to get distracted or thrown out of the pretty good thing he and Jon have somehow got going already. But then they’ve always had natural rhythm in everything they’ve tried. 

 

Emily makes a very pleased noise. “Oh, babe, you look so good. Jon looks like he wants to  _ eat  _ you. I like seeing him all wild like this, I don’t usually get to because, you know, I’m busy taking it.”

  
“Fuck,” Jon says into the dip of Lovett’s neck. “Em. Fuck.” Lovett tips his head back and Jon kisses the stretch of his throat so, so gratefully. 

 

Emily says, “Lovett, babe, use your nails some more, mm, that’s it, see, it gives him good focus.” It makes Jon shake, too, and Lovett wants to do this everywhere, cover Jon in red lines of hishishis, each one of them attached to a laserbeam kiss left somewhere on Lovett’s throat, his collarbone, his shoulder. 

 

Lovett can’t help gasping, pushing harder against Jon with intent already. “Hey, Favreau, handjobs, god, handjobs okay with you?” he asks, because he doesn’t think either of them have the brain space to make anything more happen. “That seems like about what I can handle.” He wiggles himself out of his stupid good jeans, just manages to get them down to his ankles and then gives up for now.

 

“Handle,” Jon snickers. 

 

“Save it for an ad read,” Lovett says and pushes Jon’s boxers off, finds his dick already leaking. “Oh, babe.”

 

Jon whines in his throat, hides his face in Lovett’s neck. 

 

“Wishing there were pillows?” Lovett asks, and Jon nods. “How do you even know that?” he says. “God.” 

 

Lovett thinks about all the things he could say about Jon and his painfully obvious needs, about his basic-ass kinks, about Catholicism. About sex in general. “I know you,” he says. “Really, really well. Because I love you.” Jon’s dick pulses in his hand, predictable wonder that he is. “Don’t get embarrassed about being into me, come on, do you even know me?” 

 

Emily shifts, Lovett can see her out of the corner of his eye. “He does,” she promises. “No hiding, baby.” She reaches out and Lovett has to say, “Not this time?” There’s no way he can make it good for Jon if he’s worrying about Emily touching him when he comes, and he feels out of control enough that he might just... come. 

 

Jon stills but Emily says, “It’s okay, babe, later, okay? I’m good. Your job right now is to stop hiding your pretty face. Let Lovett see how much you like it.” 

 

Jon raises his head at once, turns it so that Lovett can kiss him. “You doing alright?” he asks Lovett quietly, a patented Favreau pivot to sincerity. 

 

“Yeah,” Lovett says, and when Jon doesn’t stop looking at him like that, “I really am. Just didn’t want to get distracted right now by my own stupid hangups, okay?” 

 

It’s not unexpected but still lovely when Jon bends his head to touch their foreheads together and says, “They’re not stupid, Lovett.” 

 

Lovett says, “We can debate this another time.” It comes out a little raw with unexpected intimacy, this vision of the two of them bickering their way through their shit like always, of Emily come to curl up with them on the sofa as they tell him he’s not being stupid, over and over until he half believes it, until they have a solution.

 

Jon says, “But you would tell me, right? If you weren’t... If I did something you didn’t like.” Jon has raw places too. It’s important and incumbent on Lovett not to forget, even when he’s so turned on that his brain is half-fused circuits of sex. 

 

“I promise,” he says softly. “Now can we please get back to the sex? Have I satisfied all of your tender urges? God, I know Tommy said be gentle, but there comes a point in handjobs where you do actually have to do some firmer touching.” He gives Jon’s dick an illustrative tug. 

 

Jon laughs, body moving against Lovett’s, this old thing in a new setting. “No quoting Tommy when you’ve got my hand on my dick.” 

 

“No promises,” Lovett says with grim honesty. Their lives are a shambles, a wreckage of interpersonal boundaries, and the quicker they admit that the better. He hears Emily laugh, a brilliant burst of delight in the background. “Come on, baby, just go with it, let me get you off.” 

 

Jon says, “Oh, fuck, well, okay then,” almost gasping it out, barely words. 

 

There are few things Lovett likes better than just undoing smart, smart, handsome Jon Favreau, and this is probably going to be his new favourite way of doing it, just with one hand on Jon’s leaking dick. Just pushing Jon’s dick through his fist, unfancy as fuck. He feels heady with it, his hips aching to move more, in a way that he’s enjoying holding out for. “Not got so much to say now, huh?”

 

“Lovett,” Jon whines, nuzzling into his cheek, not even able to kiss; Lovett may never have known smugness like this. Lovett gives him a smile, guides his mouth through a kiss, slow and careful with him, presses his own dick against Jon’s thigh in a slow grind to match. 

 

“I can be a bit mean with him, right?” Lovett asks. He’s pretty sure that he knows the answer, but still, he wants to do something with this awareness of Emily that’s sitting comfortably alongside the reality of Jon’s skin on his, the soft sheets under him. The unusual way that he feels on the same page as his body. And he wants to tease out the things that Jon doesn’t know how to say he wants. 

 

Emily says, “Oh yeah, go for it. Don’t hold back on my account, babe, mess him up all you want. Also, he likes it.”

 

“I’m - jesus, Jon - I’m right here,” Jon groans, and Lovett decides to reward him, thumbs at the wet head of his dick, finds as many sensitive spots as he can with his fingers. 

 

Emily makes a ‘hmm’ing noise. “I think maybe you like being here while Lovett and I talk about how you’re basically our property.” 

 

Lovett says, “Oh I think you’re right, Em, he’s totally hard for that.” He twists his hand a little and Jon collapses slightly, arms giving out at the elbows, and it’s worth the getting winded and the wrist rearrangement because now he’s so close, all tucked up against Lovett’s body, less carefully held away. Lovett is going to tell them how here for that he is, later. “Elbows and all,” he says stupidly, but Jon just lets it go, kisses into the hollow of Lovett’s neck and says, “Fuck,” as Lovett rocks into him. 

 

“He’s close, babe,” Emily says quietly. “Very close.” 

 

Lovett rakes his hand up Jon’s back, the hardest he’s dared, and Jon almost shouts, hips jerking, breath punching against Lovett’s neck. Lovett manages to get his other hand back around his dick properly, lets himself just rut against Jon’s thigh, uncaring, and there are words, probably, in among the desperate noises Jon is making, but Lovett can’t work them out in this mess of pleasure, of all the good things they are together right now, of Jon fucking Favreau shaking against him. “Come on, Jon, come on, love,” he says, and Jon comes all at once, his body slamming into Lovett’s. 

 

Lovett hears Emily’s breath go harsh, louder, which probably means good on women as well, and he agrees, pulls Jon closer, gets as good an angle as he can, moves his hand onto his own cock, half trapped between Jon’s thigh and his own. “Not going to last, just, just stay here a minute,” he tells Jon. 

 

“Can do,” Jon says, turning his face and kissing Lovett’s cheek over and over in between pants. Lovett’s hand is wet with Jon’s come, Jon is his and is kissing him, sexed-out heavy against him, and Lovett is too far gone on him, on all of this, to even try and last. 

 

“I’m, really, I’m  _ really _ ,” he says, managing to wrench his eyes open again only to get stupidly, helplessly lost in the way that Jon is looking at him. 

 

Like something beautiful.  

 

Jon wriggles his hand down into Jon’s boxers, pushes his fingers between Lovett’s so that his fingertips are brushing Lovett’s cock, teases of skin, and grins so hard when Lovett swears. He says, “Oh, do you like that?” which is cruel, cruel, because he knows Lovett is weak to all his teasing, to all of those brushes of wickedness he has. 

 

Lovett manages, “Jon,” a desperate vow of a thing, before everything is taken down by his orgasm, just shakes all over and apart with it, any words that were coming fractured into sounds. Jon is saying, “Holy shit, Lovett, holy shit,” over and over into his ear, clinging on, arms so strong, holding Lovett in place, in this right place. Lovett can’t move, doesn’t want to, but he needs to, he needs. “Emily,” he says, and feels Jon breathe in sharply. 

 

“What do you need, baby?” Emily says, immediately. Her voice is very rough, as rough as Lovett has ever heard it, and his besexed brain can’t pin down the reasons. 

 

He doesn’t know the need thing either. He just. “You still with us?” he asks. His voice is shot too, wrung out with everything. 

 

“I’m here,” Emily says. “I’m here, you want me closer?” 

 

Lovett makes a noise that makes about as much sense as his brain does. “Touch Jon,” he settles on, turning his head so that he can see her. It’s better at once, and she starts stroking Jon’s hair, tells him, “Good job, baby, you made Lovett come his actual brains out, look, look what you did to our smart guy,” and that’s even better. Best. 

 

Lovett says, “I’ll let you have him in, like, a minute, and he can do you too.” 

  
“You’re so very kind,” Emily says, possibly doing some accent work. Lovett adores her. “He does do me very well.”

  
“Likewise,” Lovett says, stretching out slightly from the ball of tangled Jons that he had somehow ended up in, enjoying every good pull of muscle and wave of pheromones or whatever the happy sex chemicals are. “God, Jon, I really think you broke me. With a handjob. A fingerjob. I should be ashamed.”

 

Emily bites her lip again, holds herself tense, crouched above them, hand still in Jon’s hair. “There was fingering?” 

 

“If only,” Lovett says with a sigh. “Then I wouldn’t have to be ashamed at all. Come on. What happened was that your husband managed to get like, two and a half fingertips on my dick and that was apparently more than enough for me to be sexually overcome.” 

 

“We should do that,” Emily says. “Then you’d know how right you are about not having to be ashamed.” She cards her fingers through Jon’s hair some more and he shivers. “You okay there, Jon?” 

 

Jon looks up at her with a pleading look. “I’m too old for the two of you combined,” he says. “You’re going to murder me with fucking, look at me, I can feel my body trying to get hard again and it really hurts.”

  
“You like that too,” Emily says, so gently, so firmly, and Jon whimpers revealingly in response.

 

Lovett groans but it’s really still the best kind of too much, the kind that just makes him feel luxurious, like he could stretch out to the end of his fingertips and never find the edge of good things. The exact mechanics are new but the setting is not. He has muscle memory of being safe to be happy here, with them. “Come on, come join in while your husband is alive and I’m in untouchable afterglow,” he says. 

 

“You okay with staying?” Emily says, not moving. Lovett wriggles a hand out from the heap. “If you're okay with it,” he tells her, patting her knee stupidly. They've given him room to manœuvre at every single step, he wants her to know she has that space too. 

 

“Oh,” Emily says. “Oh Lovett.” She covers his hand with hers, stills its clumsy movement. “I'm okay with it. Don't go. Stay. Watch, if you want.”

 

Lovett can't find the words tell her, in this moment, that he knows the amount of trust he's being gifted. They don't tell Jon about the conversations they've had late at night when the TV has been turned down to a comforting background susurrus and Emily, wine glass in hand, tells him that she thinks she looks ugly during sex. “Okay, babe,” he says softly, hopes she picks up at least some of what he's feeling. They can get into it later. 

 

“Jon,” Emily says, stretching out the the ‘oh’ into a plea. 

 

Lovett pokes at Jon. “Your wife wants to be a pillow princess, up you go.” 

 

Jon makes a vaguely protesting, “Ugh,” but he's smiling, laughing, as he pushes Emily back into the pillows. “That's exactly what she is,” he says adoringly. 

 

“Always suspected as much,” Lovett says with satisfaction, turning himself to watch. He's always had a vague picture of what they must be like in bed but now he's going to see inside their innermost circle of intimacy, nothing about them that he doesn't know. 

 

Emily giggles and when he meets her eyes there's years of laughter in them. “Lovett's ascended to a new plane of smug,” she says. 

 

“I'm going to know all of your sex secrets,” Lovett says. “So su-” 

 

“No, god,” Jon groans but Lovett ignores him. 

 

“-suck it, Vietor.” He'd do a fist pump just for extra bro victory but his limbs are starting to feel heavy. He pulls one of their thousand blankets around himself, settles into a half propped up curl, makes himself comfortable because that’s what they all want. 

 

“Mm, you've absolutely won, baby,” Emily says. She pulls Jon in with a heel in the small of his back, and Jon goes so easy, pushes up her dress with eager hands, both of them slipping into this dynamic like Jon slides into their pool at the end of the day sometimes, at home in this simple relief for what his body has been craving. It’s obviously a great look on him. 

 

Lovett says, “Careful with that dress, I-” 

 

“Fought a Bloomingdales harpy for it and bruised your hip on a clearance bin, I know,” Jon says with infinite fondness. He turns his head to smile at Lovett with a casual air, like he smiles at him from between his wife’s legs every day, like he’s heard this story a thousand times and the thousand and second being after Lovett made him come all over himself isn't any different. 

 

Lovett says, “Yes,” in a small, unfortunately sincere voice. “I did. Yes.” 

 

“Jon can kiss it better sometime,” Emily says. She puts her hand on the back of Jon’s neck and he makes the prettiest noise in response. “Baby. I want your fingers. My turn.” 

 

Jon moves and Emily lets out a gut punch breath. Lovett can't really see what Jon's doing but Emily sounds ragged already when she says, “That's right, just, that's perfect.”

 

Lovett can hear Jon's breathing go rapid, see the intense edge of his jaw as he focuses in on making her feel good. He remembers, almost laughs at it, the look on Jon's face when he'd told them about how, a year into dating, this tiny just graduate had said that he'd finally become the best sex of her life. There's nothing on this wide earth Jon cares about more than spoiling Emily in every way he can think of. And that she'll allow. 

 

The thing of it is... It doesn't feel exclusionary watching them all wrapped up in each other, in an act that is feted as the embodiment of marriage and norms and everything Lovett isn't. But they’re his. He pulls the soft blanket closer around himself, revels for a moment in this discovery, in all the stupid half-selfless love he feels, knowing that they are so happy, knowing that they’re like this because of him. 

 

Jon is whispering in Emily’s ear, inaudible but clearly adoring, Lovett can tell from his face, although it’s making Emily writhe, say, “Oh, god,  _ Jon _ .” Maybe it’s adoring dirty talk, or maybe she’s like her husband, also hot for having ‘I love you’s dropped in her ear. Seems likely. She shudders harder, harder, and then her legs come up around Jon, and he says, “Again? Yeah?” and she nods, and the good ache comes back into Lovett’s chest, the pain of this much intimacy, all their years of knowing every single thing about each other revealed to him. 

 

Emily says, “Yes, just like that, just, just there, best fingers, we’ll all see,” Jon nodding into her neck like they’re planning something, right now, with Emily on the edge again, somehow again. 

 

Lovett likes that. 

 

Jon says, “God, fuck, you’re amazing,”  and Emily gasps, one foot flexing wildly, turns her face into him as he moves to kiss her as she comes. Again. Lovett is not going to be over that any time soon. He idly watches them kiss, breathe, kiss again until Emily says, “Hey Jon Lovett, do you want to come cuddle?” 

 

“Can I bring my blanket?” Lovett asks. He’s not ready for naked cuddling. He’s not sure he’s ready to be naked at all but somehow he jumped most of these hurdles completely accidentally. It’s not like he is ever going to be able to compete with the display of bodily ideals happening further on up the bed anyway. “It’s my gay security blanket.”

 

Emily laughs obligingly and says, “Of course you can, darling, your gay security is very fluffy and pleasant.” She rolls Jon off her and pats the bed to her side. She’s all flushed and lovely to match Jon, both of them still breathing a little harder than usual, still hazy. Lovett files all of this away, finally allowing every greedy urge he’s ever had to spread its wings.

 

“I’m coming to the middle for, like, ten minutes before I get too hot and bail,” he says, and wiggles his way up to the pillows, pushes Jon’s feet on the way so that by the time he reaches his desired position Jon has mostly got out of the way. “This is as good as I’m getting, huh?” he says and Jon just kisses him. Lovett doesn’t want to set any kind of precedent here but, he doesn’t grumble and does let Jon kiss him and then throw an arm over him. 

 

“Hi Jon,” he says and Jon, of course, says, “Hi Jon!” and that really sets them off giggling. 

 

Emily says, “Hi, my idiots.” 

 

Lovett turns under Jon’s arm and kisses her on the nose, which is abominably sweet but... He’s sweet on her. “Hello, my Em,” he says, not quite as casual as he wanted. Jon makes a happy noise and tucks his face into Lovett’s neck, fitting himself all against Lovett’s body. 

 

“Did you have fun, my Lovett?” Emily asks, also missing casual by quite a mark. 

 

“It was lovely. You looked lovely,” Lovett says, swallowing, almost too sincere in this feeling to fucking talk, and Emily beams at him, puts her arm over him too. “I’m very - ugh, fuck - I’m very happy with how that went, I’m just... Very happy.” He wriggles slightly. “Really fucking overheating, though.”

 

“Warmest love you know, right?” Jon says, kissing the nape of Lovett’s neck, clearly incredibly pleased with himself. 

 

“Ugh,” Lovett says, kicking back with his foot, biting his lip to stop his smile overtaking his whole body. “Write your own romantic declaration, Favreau, stop stealing my lines.” Emily puts her hand over her mouth to laugh. 

 

“It’s a motif,  _ Jonathan _ ,” Jon says, kiss punctuating. “Chief Speechwriter, here.” He shifts his arm to over Lovett’s waist, holds him even tighter.

 

“Secretary, currently,” Emily points out before Lovett can. “Give us another couple of minutes, babe, and then we can fight over sleeping arrangements.” 

 

Lovett shifts down in his blanket that smells like home, Jon’s arm a steady weight over him and Emily smiling, promising negotiations. “Ugh again, but, fine. I guess I will let you cuddle me for another five minutes, tops, I’m -” he pauses for effect. “- I’m very easy like that,” and waits, perfectly content, for the warm, bright laughter he knows is coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me at crookedcommunela.tumblr.com


End file.
